


Swift Hounds of Lússa

by SkadizzleRoss



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Azazel's Special Children, Gen, Psychic Sam, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 19:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1910559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkadizzleRoss/pseuds/SkadizzleRoss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Summary:</b> AU. The yellow-eyed demon has lucked out with a bumper crop, this time around. At age eight Andy Gallagher ordered his father to back down. Sam Winchester was showing empathy at four. And at seven Ansem Weems suggested his mother let the paring knife slip, just a little.</p><p>Now in their twenty-first year, their numbers are on a bloody decline. Andy Gallagher has problems of his own, and it's not just the murder scene with his fingerprints all over it and the pair of fake FBI agents on his tail. He has to kill his brother, after all; no one else can do it. A 2009 spn_j2_bigbang fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Swift Hounds of Lússa: Prologue

  
SWIFT HOUNDS OF LÚSSA  
by [](http://acerbus-instar.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://acerbus-instar.livejournal.com/)**acerbus_instar**  
Art by [](http://tahu.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://tahu.livejournal.com/)**tahu**  
Vid by [](http://chiak.livejournal.com/profile)[**chiak**](http://chiak.livejournal.com/)  
[](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com/) **spn_j2_bigbang**  
07-02-2009

  
by [](http://tahu.livejournal.com/profile)[**tahu**](http://tahu.livejournal.com/)

“Sirius rises late in the dark, liquid sky  
On summer nights, star of stars,  
Orion’s Dog they call it, brightest  
Of all, but an evil portent, bringing heat  
And fevers to suffering humanity.”  
\-- _The Iliad_ by Homer

PROLOGUE

Andrew Gallagher gives a speech at his father’s funeral service in late April, and it’s pretty good. Simple, eloquent, heartfelt. Or so say the strangers that clap him on the back afterwards.

The whole time his mouth’s moving, he’s not thinking of the corpse at his back. He’s thinking of the sweat on his hands, and the way he stumbles through part of a sentence and everyone smiles anyway. He thinks of the girl in the fifth row, house left, hair in curls, and then he thinks very hard about not thinking about her. He thinks about his mother, ashes-and-dust many years ago, and his other mother, maybe an actual mother now, not just the quitting kind. He thanks God that the coronary took it's time, because three years ago he’d be stuck back in the foster home this time tomorrow, inheritance or not. He retracts that notion a few seconds later, after remembering the crucifix all of five feet behind him.

Towards the end of his speech he looks back for dramatic effect. His dad’s picture is propped up in a wreath of flowers. It looks absurd. The eulogizing auto-pilot part of him's concluding with the irrevocably canned, “We’ll miss you," while his mind’s jumping to the time his father found the pot stashed under his desk. Sat him down with a firm ‘Goddammit, Andrew’ and turned the bag over in his hands, looking disappointed, as is required of parents in modern society. And then he said, “I don’t care what you do, son. Just do _something_ with yourself.”

Andy found the blunt statement strangely moving. More so than his own words. 

He wants to turn back to the misty-eyed audience and say, 'He did something,' but he can’t think of what, and he’s never been good at certain types of lying. He just looks down like he’s repressing some unspeakable welling of emotion and steps off the stage. He sits in the front pew, crammed up against the far end, so no one can look and see how stone-dry his face actually is.

After the speech he’d given the pot back to Andy, and Andy had asked if he wanted some. His dad had laughed and said ok. The man was a teenager in the 60’s. Andy’s not that much of an idiot.

Once the funeral’s done, Andy shakes the right amount of hands and slaps the right amount of shoulders and walks home. The sun’s hung low and hot on the horizon, promising a miserable summer. It’s muggy and hazy, just normal April in the Midwest, and his father’s dead and buried.

Once the phone's unplugged and the door’s locked he gets very drunk. Not because he’s grieving, per se. Not because he _isn’t_ grieving, per se. It’s just nothing out of character. He’s firmly locked into neutral gear and never leaving it, because that’s where he’s comfortable. Neutral means not having to think. Alcohol and the occasional rope-a-dope are insurance to that end. This is life, straight and even.

He falls asleep on the couch. That night, he starts to dream.


	2. Swift Hounds of Lússa: Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy starts a fight.

PART ONE

“When this star appears up over the rim of the sea,  
Which at its rising not even the flood of Ocean can quench,  
It fashions unbridled spirits and violent hearts  
And endues those born under it with billows of anger and fear and hatred  
Of the whole people.”  
\--Manilius, _Astronomica_

 

 

 

 

He’s not a bar person. He doesn’t look like a bar person, twitching on his stool no matter how many times he tells himself to settle down, jumping every time someone moves just right. No one calls him on it because no one pays any attention to him, not even after his cell phone goes off and he cuffs his drink into the lap of the man to his right. The man notices _that_ , of course, and looks at him like he’s considering how tiny of a ball he can crush him into, but he forgets about it after Andy shoves a handful of paper towels at him.

The thing is, he’s telling people not to look, so they aren’t looking. They move and talk and drink, argue and gamble and curse, but no one in this particular corner of nowhere has any good reason to notice the 20-something slouching by the torn-up countertop.

They have even less of a reason to look when he slips off the bar tool and leans against the counter, elbows propped up on the sticky too-polished wood. The transformation is impressive. Well, Andy thinks so. The spasmodic idiot turned calm – very, very calm.

There’s an Indiana interpretation of the blonde bombshell in the corner booth, the sparkle of her three-dollar faux diamond earrings dulled by the low lighting. She smiles over the lip of her drink, but the gesture never reaches flint-sharp eyes wrapped in gaudy pink Cover Girl.

The twenty-somethings by the dartboard are haranguing their comrade for getting the dart firmly stuck in the frame of the bathroom door. He takes their jibes with a vengeful grin. Little too much venge. Not quite enough grin. Judging by the meticulous aiming that follows, it looks like the next miss might be in his buddy’s ear.

The six-foot-seven welder watching his shot go wide at the pool table is slapping his knee and cursing, an _’oh, gee’_ kind of gesture, but his shoulders are drawn up in a terse line that his partner seems to be oblivious to.

And maybe he’s starting to think, _That was my last twenty._

Maybe he’s starting to think, _He was supposed to throw this god-damned game._

Andy’s mouth draws up into a pensive line.

He’d started a fight in the eleventh grade with a jock named Adam Boyd. He hadn’t done it for a particular reason, or at least, not one that he remembers anymore. There was probably something at the time, some petty sleight that the asshole had committed against him, but hell, that was five years ago, almost a quarter of his life. All he remembers was that he’d had a jittery frustration burning in him for three or four days before he’d taken a seat behind the guy in the cafeteria and gone to work on him. Pokes, prods at first. Suggestions, like, _Jesus, that guy next to you is loud, isn’t he? Wish he would shut his mouth, don’t you?_ And then, _But no, he’s just an idiot. Someone that_ could _use it, though—_ And then the guy was envisioning that slacker, Andy Gallagher, always smiling at his girlfriend in that dopey pot-head way of his. Andy did not, in fact, have any interest in his girlfriend, whose breasts had a higher intelligence quotient than her actual brain.

Once the stage was masterfully set, he’d sauntered into the jock’s peripheral vision, and bingo. Fire.

He’d kicked Andy’s ass, of course, the three-year champion point guard for the basketball team, but the six little punches he’d gotten in had felt _good,_ even with the ten days of suspension the administration had slapped on the both of them for it. Boyd had gotten kicked off the team. Andy saw it as icing on the cake.

And that was that. His teachers had given him a talking to, his principal had given him a talking to. His father hadn’t, but by that point his father didn’t try anymore.

The only difference here is that there isn’t anyone to pony up a speech on moral responsibility.

No. The only difference is, he’s got words in his head, words that he didn’t have six days ago. Words from the mouth of a guy with a rabid look in his eye. A guy who shoved him hard against the wall and whispered, ‘Andy? Listen to me. Listen very carefully. People? People are _breakable_. Do you get that?’

He’d rejected it then, violently, as violently as the hot sticky mess of blood on the floor. The sickly-sweet stench of it.

Now he thinks, Yes. People are breakable. A person is a glass sitting on a nice high shelf. A good breeze in just the right direction, and off it goes. Shattered. Can you blame gravity for that? For how breakable they are?

If you’re going to blame anyone, you should probably blame God.

Across the room, the welder reaches over the pool table to seize his opponent of twelve years by the shirt collar. The sound of fabric tearing has everyone looking, but not for long – two seconds later the weedy little punks by the fraying dartboard are scuffling on the floor, punches thrown wild and haphazard. Indiana bombshell has spilled her drink over the front of her asswipe of a boyfriend, and he’s screaming about the Wal-Mart button-up like it’s Armani. The man from the booth over is pulling him away from her; the boyfriend disapproves. Good Samaritan throws the first punch.

It crackles through the room faster than a wildfire; stage set, Andy doesn’t have to point. Even the sixty-year-old woman in the corner is throwing a haymaker at Grandpa.

It’s thrilling and horrifying and he’s going to throw up. But Jesus, he’s grinning the whole time, right up until the six-foot dairy farmer to his right slams a fist into his jaw.

 

 

 

 

 

The bar clears out before a single police boot touches the liquor-slick floor. Blue and red strobe on the ceiling spooked everyone that could still run. Even the cop takes the time to look impressed as he steps inside; there are four people left of the thirty that had begun the brawl, and two of them are unconscious. Russell Boyd, barkeep of twenty years, is sweeping up glass behind the counter. He doesn’t look up to announce, “Took you twelve minutes.”

Philip Hausman brushes a hand over his beard, surveying the damage with clinical calm while he reasons, “You’re a decent stretch of country away, Russ. We were doin’ 80 the whole way.” Inspection complete, he breathes out a sigh. “Now what the hell happened here?”

“Mass hysteria,” the bartender answers matter-of-factly, and throws the broom aside. He ducks under the counter, shoving aside wet slivers of glass with a dishtowel until he can find what he’s looking for: a metal scoop. When he reappears he brandishes it at the cop while he snaps, “Robert Gervais, you know him?”

“You’ll have to refresh my memory,” Hausman says apologetically. One particularly miserable-looking man is making a crawl for the door. The cop slaps it shut with one hand.

“Man’s never hurt a goddamned fly,” Russ continues. There’s the plastic schk of the cooler lid flipping open, then the clink of ice on metal. He starts pouring the half-melted cubes into Ziploc bags. “He took to his pool buddy of twelve years with the cue over a twenty dollar loss."

“That the start of it?”

“No.” The answer’s delayed, confused.

Hausman doesn’t wonder at the hesitation. “So what started it?”

“I did,” calls a dejected voice from the opposite side of the counter.

A bruised hand appears on the rim of the bar, followed by the rising of mussed-up hair and a slack-jawed young man, no older than 25. The bartender had almost forgotten about him.

Hausman turns doubtful eyes on Russ.

Russ bluntly parrots, “He did,” and ducks under the counter again.

The policeman takes his officious tone: “How old are you?”

“21, sir,” the kid says.

The soft drawl’s not quite Midwest, not quite Texas. “Where you from?”

“Oklahoma, sir.”

“And you threw the first punch?”

He nods, that time. Hausman’s a skeptical man at the best of times. The bartender looks up to find the cop’s eyes on him. “You got a statement to give, Russ?”

The 50-something (60-something, in point of fact) shrugs narrow shoulders. “He started it.”

“Well Jesus, Russell, don’t drown me in details.”

“All politeness, I got a huge goddamn mess to clean up. You want details, come back when there isn’t beer soaking into my goddamn hardwood.”

The goddamn hardwood in question was scuffed to hell in his grandfather’s time; it’s nothing to bitch about. Hausman knows it, Russell knows it. They gauge each other over the counter before Hausman reaches for his cuffs.

“Can you cuff ‘em in the front?” the kid implores timidly, holding his hands out. “Bad shoulder.” Russ just stares at him, unease churning an already unsettled stomach.

“Yeah, sure,” Hausman says amicably enough.

They’re about to turn when Russ finally spits it out. “This place isn’t respectable, don’t get me wrong. But this crowd? They weren’t heading toward a fight. Then, just…” He shakes his head. Then the kid walked in. A stupid, superstitious notion. He sounds like an idiot, and looks like one - zipping and unzipping the same plastic bag. Catching himself, he drops the bag down on the counter and concludes with a definitive, “It’s that mob mentality psychobabble, I tell you.”

“Right. Well, I believe you there.” He looks confused; Russ feels confused. Dazed by this whole mess. Dazed by the idea of Steven Travers, on his knees in front of a 21-year-old scrawny pothead-- “But,” the cop conjectures with a sigh, “My boss’ll be happier if I bring _someone_ in for this mess. You want me to leave a couple of these idiots here to help you clean up?”

“Might as well. And tell Seth Murphy he owes me a new light.” He gestures towards the sparkle of red-and-tan on the main floor, what had once been his prized _Budweiser_ light fixture.

“Will do. You think of any other names you want paying for the damages, you let me know.”

He throws a “Hey, kid” to the back of their heads before they reach the door. The ice pack takes an uneven arc through the air, but the shrimp manages to catch it, handcuffs and all. “Thanks, man,” he says with an empty smile, and then presses the pack to the darkening line of his jaw.

The door snaps shut and Russ hurls the next ice pack at Zach Guberman’s head. “Get up, you idiot, and grab a goddamned dustpan.” The drunk – one of his best customers – groans as an answer, so he gets a broom to the gut to go with it.

It’s five am before Russ leaves the place, and it still needs about six more buckets of Pine-sol to scrub the souring lager smell out of the floorboards.

The whole time, he’s thinking about the kid. The goddamn kid. But for all the hours of contemplation he puts into it, Russ can’t think of a single way how the kid had started it. But he had. It’s a stark fact in his mind. Just by walking in the door, the kid had started it.

…Strange goddamn night.

 

 

 

 


	3. Swift Hounds of Lússa: Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Winchesters visit Guthrie.

PART TWO  


 

“Words run ahead of their speakers,  
Their mind outdistances their mouth, and their hearts palpitate,  
Stirred by the least causes.”  
\--Manilius, _Astronomica_

 

 

 

 

Syrup melts hot and sticky on the midsummer air of this particular Nebraska pancake house. The desiccated pages of the _Omaha World-Herald_ don’t so much crackle as death-rattle while Dean works his way through it, keeping the black-and-gray newsprint up as a concise barrier between himself and his jackass of a brother.

The first words of the morning, beyond ‘I’ll have the bacon and eggs, please’, are an awed, “No shit.”

The response is silence.

No “What?” No “Huh?” No annoyed little ‘ _hm?_ ’ noise in the back of the throat. Dean folds the newspaper down.

They aren’t on speaking terms – to the point of not even looking at each other for longer than brief, resentful flickers of time – and true to form, Sam’s eyes catch his for milliseconds before he takes to staring intently at his vivisected waffle.

Dean gives his best shit-eating smile to his brother’s scalp and folds the _Herald_ to frame the article in question. Sam has to rescue his coffee from a spill when Dean shoves the paper violently across the tacky formica, announcing smug as can be, “Your boy’s still in the running.”

Luxuriously slow Sam takes a bite of waffle, chews, and swallows before reluctantly pressing the paper level with the flat of his palm. It’s obvious the moment the article’s implications sink in: shoulders rise and the fork clinks on the plate, newspaper flying off the table to obscure all but mussed-up morning hair.

Before Sam’s even looked up Dean’s preempting him. “Pack up your breakfast, Sam, we’re goin’ to Guthrie.”

“He’s not in Guthrie,” Sam says from behind the paper.

“Always start at the beginning, I say.”

Now he’s looking at him, mild resentment on his face. “We’ve got a perfectly good lead.”

Dean’s already standing up, flicking through a wad of dollar bills for the tip. “Pack it up, Sam.”

“He’s not in Guthrie!”

He smacks the money down with the same smug grin. “We’re goin’ to Guthrie.”

 

 

 

He’s not in Guthrie.

Andrew Gallagher was last seen at 12:42 am, roughly twenty-five minutes after Therese Derringer’s hypothesized time of death. Security tapes at the local dive show him speaking with one Sharon Delaney before driving away in her car. She claims to remember nothing of the exchange, having hit the liquor a little hard that night over a recent break-up. The license plate is flagged, on the off chance the idiot gets himself pulled over, but optimism is low on that front. Everyone who knew him has got the same thing to say: Andy’s a good kid, he’ll turn himself in. Probably just a freaked witness. Probably had nothing to do with it.

Dean’s winding up for the kill on this one. He’s already convinced.

Sam isn’t speaking much on the matter.

Andy has two things to his name: a van, and a house. The van has been impounded. Besides a relatively unsurprising collection of weed, a team of six forensic scientists didn’t find a damn thing.

They don’t bother with the van. They already know where the house is, after all.

 

 

 

Sam’s three feet into the foyer – smaller than he remembers - before he murmurs, “I don’t think he did it.” Speaking softly, so as not to disturb the dead.

Dean speaks loudly just to see him wince. “I think he’s guilty until proven otherwise, Sam.”

Obstinately: “Why?”

“You know why.”

 _More_ obstinately: “Why _specifically?_ ”

Failing to rise to the occasion – for once – Dean just shrugs and turns towards the dining room. “Max Miller. Nice kid, right? So was Andy.”

“Yeah, and we know how that Max Miller thing ended.” Sam follows with two belligerent strides, but Dean doesn’t turn to look. Just hisses, “ _Jesus_ , Sam,” same way he always does, and moves into the kitchen. Conversation closed, the gesture says.

 

 

Dean’s looking for bloody knives and embittered manifestos. A hedonistic shrine to the almighty Satan, maybe.

Sam just looks.

The house is about the same as it was in April, just a longer lawn on the outside and thicker dust on the inside. The fridge is spotless except for some expired milk, the cupboards cleaner still. Beds still made, nothing packed. Thomas Gallagher’s jackets are still hanging in the front closet. The downstairs, with its distinctly 80’s décor, is neat and organized, most horizontal surfaces cleared off as quiet evidence of the funeral proceedings that took place there not too long ago.

Of the dozen or so portraits hung here and there, three of them feature Andy. One is on the mantle, with two smiling parents holding their new baby. That’s one of the last pictures of Anna Gallagher that was taken. Then there’s the one in the foyer of Andy as a gangly middle school kid, not so much looking at the camera as looking at the ground; and finally, tacked to the den wall, Andy as a high school graduate, grinning behind a dangling tassel.

There are fewer pictures of Tom, and no pictures of them together, beyond the one above the fireplace.

When he catches Sam staring, Dean snaps, “What are you doing? C’mon, help me look up the chimney.”

Sam doesn’t think there are any bodies stashed up the chimney, and there aren’t. Dean gets a faceful of ash for his trouble.

 

 

 

 

Dean’s still banging around the living room when Sam wanders up the padded runner of the stairs. The second floor is more what he would expect of a father-and-son household; every desk and table covered, but in a lived-in and comfortable sort of way - snug. There are still some bills waiting unopened on Thomas Gallagher’s desk, some clothes hung unworn in his closet. The boxes stacked up in the middle of the master bedroom are empty.

Andy’s bedroom is chaotic. Every horizontal surface is covered in books, papers, all the random pieces of a relatively generic life. He sorts through the shelves and drawers and piles, but he’s not looking for anything, anymore. There’s nothing here he doesn’t know already.

He’s read the page of notes a dozen times, aloud to Dean, silently to himself. He can reel it off like any religious rite, by now.

Andy Gallagher: a graduate of Guthrie High School, 53rd in his class. Never attended college. No criminal record, not even a parking ticket. Has submitted three W-2s in his life: one for a part-time job at a local grocer, one for work at a restored movie theater in the historic district of downtown, one for an odd-jobs position at Fogarty Elementary.

Born June 30th, 1983, put up for adoption the same day. Twin brother, Ansem Weems, no criminal record, attending a community college in Oklahoma City. Still lives with his adoptive mom. Abilities unknown. They’ve interviewed him twice, his mother three times; the kid has a few too many ear piercings and that rebellious-young –college-kid-with-too-much-to-prove attitude, but otherwise nothing there.

And that’s Andy Gallagher.

 

He’s been on their list for awhile: three out of twenty-two. Number two is marked through, along with numbers five, eight, nineteen, and twenty. Dates laid out neatly alongside them, ranging from April 23rd to June 9th.

The list started out with three. They’ve been building it for two years now, mostly with the help of an MIT drop-out living in a bar’s backroom outside of Broken Bow, Nebraska. Their dad doesn’t know about that bit. Their dad does not, in fact, know a lot of things about their dealings as of late. What’s fair is fair. The man left them to hunt on their own. He never said they had to only follow the hunts he orders.

 

They’d been two months out of Saginaw when they’d heard about Andy’s father, back in April. Sam had been the one to demand they go. No benefit of the doubt, not anymore. An entire family was dead from the benefit of the doubt.

 _We’ll figure it out,_ Dean said. _We’ll fix it,_ Dean said.

They haven’t fixed anything, yet. Honestly, Sam was happy thinking he was the only one with the mind tricks. Sam was happy not knowing what other mind tricks he could pull.

 

Thomas Gallagher was already so much dust in a little ceremonial box by the time they got down there. They ended up pouncing on Andy at the luncheon, after the funeral services and before the burial itself.

“Funerals are weird,” was the first thing Andy said to them, glancing from the crowd to their badges and back again. The second thing was, “Did you know that the Romans would try to catch a dying person’s last breath?”

Sam shook his head, ‘no’. Dean coughed and said, “Creepy.”

“I was reading about it. Y’know. Research. Funeral… things. So, do you guys always show up on the day of the funeral? I mean, I don’t care. But you might want to be careful, somewhere down the road you’re probably going to offend someone. Just a bit of advice.”

Andy was short, and he exaggerated it by slouching. He plucked at his sleeves constantly, obviously uncomfortable with the starched feel of the fancy button-up, and the freshly-shaved look didn’t appear to be the norm either. His hair was a mess, despite the remnants of what was probably an aunt’s unfortunate combing job. As they talked he tousled it more.

The questions were honest enough: just slowly working their way around to, “ _So did you kill your dad with your mind, Andy?_ ” And Andy seemed honestly surprised by the implication there. Even with their vaguest questions, he eventually pounced on Dean with, “What, you think I smothered him in his sleep? No. You’ve watched _Gladiator_ about sixteen too many times, man. There are doctors, y’know, it’s kind of their _job_ to tell the difference between dying in your sleep and—like—dying in your sleep.”

And Sam? Sam was convinced.

Not by the speech. He’s heard more convincing stories from bald-faced liars. But just by the _guy_. There was nothing there. Absolutely nothing there spoke of a person capable of killing.

Max Miller, well, there was something. There was something glaringly _wrong_ , a glint to the eye like a dog gone mad under the summer sun.

Dean doesn’t understand that.

Sam doesn’t particularly want him to.

There are a lot of things Dean doesn’t need to understand.

It’s arbitrary. Either way, he hadn’t killed his dad. Sam couldn’t read his mind, no better than he could read anyone else’s (a little worse, actually), but he was innocent. Even Dean had said Andy Gallagher was clean. He’d _said_ it. They’d stuck around, watched him do his thing – suggestion here, suggestion there – but there was no sign of a God complex, no abuse of power. He told a guy to lay off the liquor, calmed a grieving aunt down with a few words and hand gestures. Nothing there at all. Just a quiet, mousy kid of a 23-year-old who could tell people what to do. And people didn’t seem bothered at all.

Now, Sam can’t work out what makes him angrier: how quickly Dean dove to the offensive, or how deftly Andy Gallagher played him. _Him._

He should’ve seen it. Or at least – something.

 

 

 

The bedroom doesn’t say much. There are a couple cracked CD cases: Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, REM. A battered desktop computer that looks like something from the late 90’s. The dresser’s mostly empty, a sock or two abandoned in the back corners. The only thing tacked to the wall is a poster: Pink Floyd. Of course. Some stereotypes are too easy.

For an academic non-achiever, there’s a lot of Immanuel Kant and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Analytical philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, linguistic theory. High-brow stuff.

He’s flipping through a torn-up copy of David Hume’s _A Treatise of Human Nature_ when the tinny buzz of a rington set to Rush’s ‘YYZ’ kicks up somewhere below his feet. By the time he’s halfway down the stairs, Dean’s finishing up the call with a curt, “Thank you.”

Formal. How polite Dean can be when the Sheriff’s Office is doing him a favor, not just getting in the way of his grave desecration hobbies.

Dean doesn’t bother looking for him, just walks towards the door. “Found the car abandoned - Georgia. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

 

 

 

 

Smyrna, Georgia, to be precise. A woman from Atlanta reported having a lovely conversation with a red-eyed young man by the doors of a 7-11 at about nine o’ clock. She hadn’t placed the face until seeing the stack of newspapers on the counter. Somewhere in the shuffle a friendly old man by the name of Marcus Masterson had misplaced his vehicle - a 1997 Chevy Suburban, license plate _JSN 6794_. His car keys, which are in fact Sharon Delaney’s, are confiscated by the local police department as evidence.

A 1997 Chevy Suburban, Georgia plates _JSN 6794_ , is found abandoned in Louisville, Kentucky three days later. Masterson’s credit card activity leads them on a merry chase from the backwater South Carolina town of China Grove to Dayton, Ohio. There are more empty coffee cups on the Impala’s floorboards than there have been words exchanged between the brothers.

They’re stretched across sticky-hot seats for a three-hour nap when the phone goes off again.

Andy Gallagher has been arrested. Bar fight, in Evansville, Indiana.

Sam stays stretched across the backseat, feet hanging out the window. Dean drives.

 

 

 


	4. Swift Hounds of Lússa: Part Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy meets a like mind in Sam Winchester.

PART THREE

 

“Their tongue raves and barks in speaking,  
And through frequent gnashing leaves teeth in its voice.  
Their faults blaze through the effects of wine; Bacchus supplies them strength  
And explodes their savage anger into flame.”  
\--Manilius, _Astronomica_

 

 

 

 

They lay a newspaper out on the interrogation table, well within Andy’s reach. The coffee grounds sticking to the front page tell of a brief stint in a trash bin.

He skims over it now and then – not that the front page means anything to him. _Main Street Given the Green Light? Town Legislation Deliberates Once More on Traffic Policy_. The thing he should be worried about is tucked into the national news. Somewhere further in; A-2 or A-3, maybe.

It’s an intimidation ploy. He’s trying _really hard_ to feel intimidated.

He still doesn’t pick up the paper.

He drums his fingers, hums whatever song comes to mind, but with his hands so close to the stupid thing he’s just _so damn tempted._ So he leans back in his chair, instead, studying the pocked ceiling. The plan: workin’ on the plan.

Lethal injection, he decides, wouldn’t be that bad. Just one shot and you’re off. But then again, he hates needles – hence the lack of cocaine addiction – and what if it burns? He’d gone under once when he was seven to get a tube stuck in his middle ear, and the feeling of cold anesthetic trickling up his veins is a visceral memory he’ll never shake. He thinks that lethal chemicals would be warm, burning maybe, but then again, what if they aren’t? A cold slow creep and then… Nothing. The idea makes his skin crawl.

Maybe he’ll go with the insanity plea. Yeah, that wouldn’t be too bad, as long as he can avoid getting lobotomized by some Oklahoman Nurse Ratched.

Prison – is it state or federal for one murder? He thinks state – well, he could probably swing that. Might even be able to bring some order to the place. His one good deed.

8:34, the wall clock says. The detective has yet to come in. This is a one-detective town, and that one detective does not get out of bed before 9 am, “Damn his worthless hide,” according to the watch commander. He’d been in the drunk tank with the bruised-up townies until 2. Someone must have finally bothered to run his driver’s license through the system, because Hausman had marched in with a fire under his ass around that point. He led Andy down the fluorescent-and-tile hallway into the one interrogation room, handcuffing him to the table for good measure. Beyond an offer of coffee, he hasn’t seen anyone since.

It’s alright; he’s got this. He’s intimidated, right? And he wants to be here. He does _not_ want to be set free.

 

 

The handcuffs are tapping a _clack-clack-clack_ off-beat to the tune in his head when the door swings open. Andy glances at the clock. 8:42. The only words of the previous conversation that carry through are, “—some fuckin’ warning first, alright?” and a bored, “We’ll do our best, sir.” The first is Officer Pence, with his favorite curse, enunciated just right for optimum dramatic effect. The second belongs to the shorter of the two men that file through the door before it slams shut again.

They’re both taller than Andy, but the loftier one makes the other look short. They’re younger guys, the kind girls would chase, and they’re dolled up in suits that don’t quite fit them. They’re too—something. It’s the posture, Andy thinks. They slouch too much. These are Levis-and-plaid boys, not stick-up-the-ass Federal agents.

But then, Andy had thought that the first time he saw them, too.

They have the presence of mind to flash badges before they sit down. Both say FBI; shorter is Agent McDonald, taller Agent Wills. Last time they’d said _Fairview Mutual._ He’s pretty sure the names had been Schon and Valory then. Wills is wearing the same tie.

Andy sinks lower into the chair and says, “You’re not insurance agents this week.”

“No,” the shorter one replies blithely. “But you’re still Andy Gallagher.”

“And it was still a coronary,” Andy retorts, this time with the presence of mind to sound pissed.

Pretty Boy’s eyes drift across the table, and settle on the newspaper. He picks it up and starts leafing through while he says, “So, bar fight, huh?”

“Who are you?”

“FBI,” he repeats, glancing up. “Forget already?” The newspaper pages shuffle in silence for a minute before a smarmy, “Aw, lookit you.” He slides the newspaper across the table, tapping the black-and-white Andrew Gallagher smirking on the page. “Charming picture.” It’s his senior portrait, and he looks half-asleep.

Therese Derringer’s portrait is beside his. She smiles nervously for the camera, keeping half of her face hidden behind curls of hair.

There’s a hum building up in the space between his ears, seizing him with the nonsensical urge to reach up and grab it.

“Dead on arrival,” the federal officer drawls. “Understandable - I mean, _damn_ did she do a job with that knife. But of course, the cops didn’t get there until thirty minutes after the fact. The tenant upstairs didn’t even hear a scuffle until the front door slammed.” He looks at Andy, curious in a predatory kind of way. “We’ve been chasing you for four days. I really wasn’t counting on finding you in lock-up. You see, it seems to me that your thing is persuasion. So what the hell are you doing in here?”

“My thing.”

“Your thing.” A slow, dry smile. “Now, here’s how this is gonna go: you’re going to tell the friendly ol’ sheriff out there—“

There’s no warning. No tensing of the shoulders, no nervous twisting of the hands: just silence, stillness, and then an abrupt outburst: “ _Who are you? Real names,_ and _what do you want_.”

The talkative one chokes. His partner grabs him by the sleeve. His eyes are on Andy, as quietly furious as his words. “Don’t.” The buzz redoubles, turns nauseatingly loud. Andy chokes on the force of it.

It makes sense in all the ways it doesn’t: the hum is him. This guy.

Andy stares at him with flat horror.

“ _What_ are you?”

The fed just shakes his head. Whatever power was behind the words beads up and rolls off. “No less human than you.”

“Sam,” McDonald bites off, pulling out of his partner’s grip with a violent twist of his shoulder. Wills – Sam – just looks at him with surprise, like he’d forgotten the hand was even there. Then McDonald is pouncing on Andy, the previous cockiness replaced with a restrained promise of violence. “You’re talking your way out of here.”

Andy stares at him. “Easier to kill me that way?”

“We’re not going to kill you,” Wills murmurs.

Slowly, curiously: “If I say no, what’ll you do?”

McDonald leans forward, folding his hands on the gleaming tabletop. “Either way, you’re leaving. It’s your choice whether it’s out the front door or a third-story window.”

Andy flicks his attention to the – whatever – sitting to McDonald’s left. Their eyes meet for about a second and the frequency resonating in his ears immediately jumps to a new octave, setting his teeth on edge. He flinches and looks sullenly towards the door. “So call them in.”

Officer Hausman pauses a moment in the doorway. McDonald’s just opening his mouth for an excuse when the cop rips out his keys and walks over to Andy; he watches silently as the officer makes companionable small talk. “That’s it, then? Well, keep out of bar fights, runt.” No one in the room is listening; Andy is concentrating on the fake FBI agents’ faces through the crook of the cop’s elbow. Neither looks fazed.

As soon as he’s free of the table, McDonald casually reaches over and snaps the open end of the handcuff to Andy’s other wrist. He hooks a hand around Andy’s upper arm and jerks him towards the door, past a muddled-looking Hausman. “Impressive,” is the only praise Andy gets.

The three men clustered behind the two-way mirror pursue them as far as the corridor, and then they just stop, their gazes settling on the backs of the silent entourage.

It’s 8:54 in the morning, which is apparently before this small town department sees the need to open. In the main room a solitary office aide looks up from her paperwork and just as quickly looks down. The emptiness of the place leaves his throat dry and his head pounding, any coherent thoughts evaporating quickly under the harsh fluorescent lights.

Not real, is the only thing he can think past the growing static in his head. _Not real not real not real._

A red-eyed fellow bent over his morning coffee is trudging up the front steps. He takes in the ties and suits and handcuffed prisoner and snaps off a lazy salute. “Officers.”

“Detective,” Wills says succinctly.

There’s a ’67 Chevy Impala parked on the curb, gleaming lustrous under a coat of road dust. That’s where they stop. Andy gets passed like a delinquent toddler from one agent to the other before McDonald throws the back door open, pulling out an armful of blankets and oil rags and heading for the trunk. On silent cue Wills shoves him towards the backseat, and seeing no alternative Andy climbs right in.

Andy never thought he would die in a classic Chevy. He supposes that it’s not the worst place. But he really would’ve preferred the jury.

Wills pulls off his jacket and tie and sinks in behind the driver’s wheel. From the uncomfortable set of his shoulders in the seatback it’s not the usual. His partner strips all the way to the white undershirt and sprawls across the passenger seat for a few seconds before jerking away from the hot vinyl and bitching about Indiana sun.

Andy sits in the middle of the seat, back straight, handcuffed hands hung between his knees. The hum’s still there, settling into a slow dull ache at the base of his skull. Once the tires start rolling he announces, “Names are kind of a common courtesy thing when you kidnap people.”

“Really,” McDonald says.

“Sam,” Wills says. He points towards the passenger. “Dean.”

“God, you’re such a killjoy,” Dean mutters.

Andy lets a few polite seconds pass before he asks, “Where are we going?”

Dean preempts any further comment by his partner with the placid guitar riffs of Rush. Andy drops lower in the seat.

Within a few miles he’s migrated from the middle to the far end, shoulder crushed against the passenger door. He’s as far away from the driver’s seat as possible. He imagines it cuts back on the constant nauseating thrum that’s sinking deeper and deeper into his bones. It doesn’t stop it, of course, and the blood roaring in his ears doesn’t help; by the town limits he’s hanging his head low, squeezing his eyes shut against the bleeding streams of morning light.

Something taps the top of his head; he jerks and snaps up, immediately flinching away from the brightness. They’re headed east, straight into the sun.

It takes him a second to make sense of the hand in front of him, two blue pills pinched between forefinger and thumb. He holds up a hand wordlessly and, like magic, they appear in the folds of his palm. Dean has sprouted a pair of sunglasses. He stares at his own reflection owlishly until the guy drawls, “Imitrex. Don’t barf in my car.” A bottle of lukewarm water drops into his lap after he dry-swallows the pills.

Being poisoned in the back of a classic Chevy. That’s not the worst way to go, either. But if he dies to the tune of _Working Man_ he’s petitioning St. Peter for a second go-around, because this is so far beyond cruel and unnecessary.

Somewhere in the thinking – or the lack thereof – he loses the hazy two-step dance with the migraine pinching at the base of his skull. He dozes off with his arms wrapped tightly around his ribs.

 

 

He dreams the same thing he’s been dreaming for days:

His father leans over him, fist pulled back for one of those famous Gallagher right hooks. “ _Don’t touch me,_ ” Andy snaps in the same little-kid tone he’d used thirteen years ago, but this time his father doesn’t stare at him with a hollow kind of drunken fear. He doesn’t back off with two unsteady steps. This time he slowly uncurls his fist and stares at the bony fingers, then looks up with a withering smile and says, “Go ahead, kiddo. We’ll let you run. She’ll rot on that linoleum and you run far.”

“I’m nothing,” Andy insists.

“You’re nothing,” his dad repeats, reassures. And then he cocks an arm back and punches him after all.

He takes the blows, just takes them, one-two-three, paralyzed eyes watching in slow motion and he’s _so goddamned angry_ , and Dad adds a conversational, “She tastes sweet, you know,” while Andy gasps blood into the carpet. “She really does.”

“Hey,” he whispers in his ear before throwing him onto his back. Andy cracks his head hard against the floor, choking, floundering, and the delirium makes Thomas Gallagher’s eyes glint sulfur-yellow as he asks, “You want to see something?”

 

 

The disjointed chime of his phone hauls him back into consciousness. The ringtone’s still set to the Imperial March, which he’s sure the caller would find hilarious.

He’s just pulled it out of his pocket when Dean snatches it from his hand. Andy blinks hazily, trying to figure out where it’s gone, before there’s the _Buh-beep_ of the call being ended and the cell phone gets chucked into the depths of the glove compartment.

Andy studies the back of the guy’s head and thinks he’s not too bad, after all.

The Imitrex is doing its thing: he feels like he’s floating on a string, but the light stays where it is, not following every turn of his head in long too-bright streams. He can’t even hear the driver, if he clenches his jaw just so.

They’re on some unkempt back road, the dirt tracks only just wide enough for the chassis of the car to pull through. Thick brambles are encroaching on both sides, sometimes trailing their fingers across the windows and roof. Andy gets lost in the confusing thicket, tracking time by the occasional patch of sun overhead.

The road ends at a cabin. It’s the hovel kind of cabin, windows either broken or boarded up, wooden siding stained gray by too many rains and not enough paint. It looks like something out of a _Friday the 13th_ movie, the sort of place you machete a racy teenager to death in.

He must’ve lost track for a second, because the car’s quiet and someone’s rapping on the window. He’s still leaning heavily against the door when they yank it open, and he almost tumbles onto the weed-and-dirt front lawn. The giant grabs him by the shoulder. Andy lurches away from the touch, imagining electric _something_ crackling in his veins.

Dean throws him a look as he shoves past. Andy isn’t thinking coherently enough to parse out what the look _is_ , exactly, but he thinks it’s a jumble of irritation and disgust.

The car door slams and Sam points him towards the house. Dean shimmies the front door, kicks it, shimmies it again, and finally wrenches it open. The hinges make an ungodly noise at the exertion.

A chair, a desk, some leaves, and one pigeon are the tenants of this particular serial murderer house. “Old friend’s place,” Dean says with a con-artist’s smile, and then shoves Andy towards the chair, which is planted ominously in the middle of the room.

Andy sits down and studies the rafters. “It’s charming.”

“Yeah, we think so.” Dean drops a heavy bag of _something_ by the desk before hopping up on top of it. Sam slides the door shut and leans against the wall, studying the floor intently like some preposterously tall impersonation of Rodin’s _Thinker._

Dean snaps his fingers to draw Andy’s attention. “So, what else can you do?”

Andy frowns at the question, and fidgets restlessly in the confines of the chair. “Can’t we do the interrogation thing outside?” The air’s thick in here, close to stifling.

“No. If you don’t mind, I’ve been chasing _your_ ass across the country for the last four days, so I’d _really_ appreciate it if you would spare me the exertion of some creative interrogation methods and just answer the question.” His boot nudges the bag as he talks, and from the smirk he’s aware that Andy notices.

“I don’t know what you mean. What can I do? I can play the guitar, like, once in a blue moon. I can quote Hegel, and I make pretty good pancakes sometimes.” And he can babble like an idiot when he’s nervous.

“Cute,” Dean says, and reaches down.

“When you showed up after my dad died,” Andy says, pitching forward in the chair. “You thought I killed him, right.”

Dean leans back, crossing his arms. “Did you?”

“You were convinced then.”

“You sounded innocent then.”

“I can’t stop people’s hearts.” He hesitates, tapping a rhythm out on the chair leg. He’s never had to say this out loud. He isn’t sure _how._ “The suggestions—that’s it. And sometimes, I can make people… see things. If I want.”

Dean nods like it’s nothing, and then polite-as-all asks, “So why’d you kill her, Andy?”

All the fidgeting comes to a halt. “I didn’t—I don’t know.”

Sam’s looking at him. Scrutinizing. His expression is something unreadable. Andy stares back, feeling about as thick as paper.

“Come on,” Dean cuts in. “Let’s hear some excuses. You two had something going for awhile, the Channel 8 News figured that much out. So, what? She turn you down? You could’ve told her to _love you,_ couldn’t you?”

“Dean,” Sam says quietly, but his brother doesn’t seem to be paying attention.

“’cause telling her to carve out her own heart? Pretty brutal, man. And what a botched job she did. Blood fuckin’ _everywhere,_ and you out of town before the body cooled.”

There’s the required pause, waiting for Andy to rise to the bait, but Andy’s staring at the desk leg, hands curled up stiffly in his lap.

“Come on, let’s hear it. She dumped you and you were upset. So you killed her. It’s not that big a step, is it? People have been doing what you tell them to do for _years_ , since you were a kid, right? What’s a little psychic-induced harikari, after all that?”

Andy’s voice is low and measured. “There wasn’t a reason.”

“So you just killed her.”

“I don’t know.”

“Your fingerprints were all over her. _Your_ fingerprints, in _her_ blood.”

 _Because I was trying to hold it in,_ Andy thinks. Something hysterical starts twisting in the back of his throat. He’s trembling; he slowly works his hands into the sleeves of his shirt, sinking deeper into himself as he repeats, “I don’t know.”

“So you just killed her.”

Low, empty, barely there: “I don’t know.”

Sam moves and Andy looks at him, waiting, but there’s no rebuttal, no fizz and spark of whatever weird power the goliath has going on.

Dean looks at his brother with something close to fury and then he’s on his feet, but Sam’s moving faster, slapping a hand against his brother’s breastbone and saying, “Tell us what happened. That’s it. What you remember.”

He shifts in the chair, sitting up straighter, emptying out his posture and his expression and his words until it’s all one neat, clipped monotone. Detached.

“I was walking, just walking. I couldn’t sleep.”

Back alley behind Gunther’s store, a few shots in him but nothing staggering. Air still summer-heavy, but with that clammy quality that it picks up sometimes once the wind starts tumbling across the flat plains. He was staring at the stars, thinking about everything and nothing.

Antsy, restless, had been all week. Nauseous with it. Stripped to the t-shirt, mumbling aloud, trying to talk himself to exhaustion. Philosophy and astronomy and discographies. Anything that came to mind, the fast jumbled spill of an overactive brain.

“I was—“ He waves a hand, trying to make sense of it in something more than words. “I was just talking to myself, about things, and I wasn’t listening. I never heard him. He just shows up in front of me, this—guy.” Vaguely Germanic features and this hungry, delighted look on his face, like a stray dog that’s happened across the perfect piece of roadkill rotting in the sun. “White guy, taller than me, my age. Looked at me like I was—dinner, or something, and grabbed me, shoved me into the wall.” Twisted his wrist into the small of his back, pressed to the tension point, tendons screaming, and he ordered him -- “Told him to get off me.” -- _ordered him_ to “get _off,” get the fuck off_ and the guy brushed it aside like nothing and leaned in close. _Hey. You wanna see something?_ Spun him around. Unfamiliar face. Totally goddamned unrecognizable.

“It didn’t work. It always works, but it didn’t then. He just laughed and asked if I wanted to see something.” Back to the wall and _No, man, I really—_ “I thought he was going to rob me or something. But he could do what I do. Make people see things. He did it to me. I didn’t know there were any others.”

He stops and draws a slow, steady breath. “He showed me Tracy.”

Tracy smiling uneasily, Tracy saying, _Hey, we’re closed_. Closed. Sign says closed, but the door’s not locked – not yet. And the son of a bitch just leaned coolly on the counter and said, _Trace_. Confusion, curiosity; she tucks a curl of hair behind her ear and raises a skeptical eyebrow, adopting that face she gets when she’s dealing with something distasteful. _S’what Andy calls you, right, hon? You are pretty. I can see that. Hey, can you do me a favor?_

“He told her--.”

_Can you pick up that knife?_

And-- Fuck. _Fuck._

“To do… what she did. I got him off.” Screamed and bucked and the kid just let go. Bleakly, he adds, “I think he let me. Ran there, wasn’t far.”

Blood sticky with summer humidity, not far at all.

He thought he could save her.

And he’s saying, detached, wonderfully detached, “She was dead. I tried to help her, but she was dead. I didn’t know what to do. The cops were coming, so I left. Stole a car and drove. I didn’t know what else to do.”

He told her don’t. _Don’t don’t jesus don’t._ He told her. _Told her._ But she wasn’t listening, either.

Didn’t hear a goddamn thing. Glossed dead eyes. A torn open doll.

That’s what he’d called her. Sauntered in while Andy pressed his fingers into sticky-hot blood, dry retches caught up in the back of his throat, trying to hold it in, all of it, even as it congealed in ropes and coils on the floor. The bastard had kneeled down beside him and said, _Just a doll, man. Why are you so upset?_

 _You didn’t love her. You can’t love any of them. They sure as hell don’t love_ you.

_They’re breakable._

Andy hasn’t said anything for awhile. Sam asks, “He tell you why?”

“You can’t seriously _buy that,”_ Dean snaps, but the question stands.

Andy stirs, the slow drip of emotion soaking back into his voice. “I tell people what to do. I’ve always told people what to do. When I got to be thirteen, fourteen? I didn’t even have to ask. People just _did it._ ” He shakes his head. “It was me. It had to have been me. I just—I just want to think it’s _not_ me.”

“You think you did it,” Sam repeats.

“You think I did it,” Andy retorts.

He stands up straighter, digging his shoulders into the flaking wall. “You found your dead girlfriend, ran away. Then you decided it was all a psychotic break. So you started the bar fight, got yourself arrested.”

Andy doesn’t respond.

“What were you gonna do?” Sam sounds quietly amused. “Swing the jury from the witness stand?”

“Why’d you run?” Dean counters.

“I thought he was following me.”

“You were running from your hallucination,” Dean deadpans. “For four days.”

“I didn’t figure it out, alright? Not until I was—calmer.”

His interrogator snorts. “It took you that long to figure out that there was no one behind you?”

“The hallucinations didn’t stop after Guthrie, right,” Sam interjects.

“Will you stop _leading the suspect?_ ”

“Will you shut up for five seconds?” The next question is back at him: “Did you see him again?”

“No.”

A smug, “See?” from Dean’s corner.

Sam sounds unconvinced. “You didn’t hear from him at all.”

Andy doesn’t answer.

The door slam finally brings his gaze up off the floorboards. Dean’s glaring at him in silence, hands fisted at his sides. Outside, the Impala’s door creaks.

The giant reappears with Andy’s cell phone in his hand.

Dean stares at it with about the same level of apathy as Andy. “Seriously?”

“Seven missed calls,” Sam says absently as he sets to work on the menus. “You should answer the phone more often.”

Within a few seconds of digital maneuvering he has it on speaker phone, dialing through to voicemail. The old piece-of-shit account doesn’t even have a passcode to roll through.

“ _You have. 3. New. Messages. 1st message, 8:36 am, Tuesday. July. 7th._ ”

“Andy, this is Doc Jennings. If you get this… Just. Just call back, son, we’ll clear this whole mess up. Alright? Please, Andy.” There’s a pause and a shuffle, then the message ends.

“ _2nd message, 10:14 am, Tuesday, July. 7th._ ”

The voice that breaks through is laced with laughter: “Jesus _Christ_ man, didn’t expect you to run that fast. Shit, didn’t you have a few words for the poor girl? Eulogy or something? I heard about that one you gave for your dad a few weeks ago while I was hanging around town. Everyone said it was a real tear-jerker.” A break, the muffled static of a sigh. “I know you might be a little upset with me, but really, Andy, this is no time for being petty. I’m not trying to _frame_ you, man. You and I both know how quick you could talk out of that. Now, even though I’m a little disappointed, I’m not giving up on you yet. You’ve got talent, my man, and I like that attitude of yours. All you need is some work ethic. Hey, maybe pick up the phone next time, huh kiddo? We’ll catch up.”

“ _3rd message, 6:47 pm, Thursday, July. 9th._ ”

The line pops and clicks with static, then goes dead.

“He could’ve planted it,” Dean says. He sounds defeated.

Sam doesn’t seem to hear. “It wasn’t you, Andy.”

“You think there’s a guy with the _exact same_ powers as him running around, offing people?”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Sam insists. “You didn’t kill her.”

“You’re just—“ Dean stops, and hisses, “Shit, Sammy.”

“Just _what?_ ”

“ _Not now_. Are you going to throw this entire case to the fucking one-armed man?”

“Harrison Ford was innocent,” Sam retorts.

“ O.J. was too, according to you.”

“So,” Sam concludes smugly, attention back on the prisoner, “Voicemail from your evil id fits where in your psychotic break theory?”

He considers it for a good three or four seconds before shrugging. “You could be hallucinations too. Justifying my original hallucination.”

Dean’s the one to make a frustrated noise this time. “Look, man, if your schizoid world is that elaborate maybe there’s a point where you should just go with it.”

It’s a fair point.

Andy scrubs a hand over his face. “Can we just pretend it was a hallucination anyway?”

“Your girl’s still dead.”

“But he didn’t kill you,” Sam announces thoughtfully. “He killed your girlfriend.”

“Maybe you’re the Clarisse to his Hannibal Lecter,” Dean jeers.

Andy stares at him, appalled in a flat post-traumatic-stress kind of way. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We don’t know what he wants,” Sam returns. “Five minutes ago I thought it was you.”

“Please,” Dean’s scoffing. “You never thought it was him. Give me the goddamn phone.” He chucks it at Andy; he doesn’t catch it, so much as let it land in his hands after rebounding off his chest. “Call him.”

Andy stares at him like he’s grown a second head.

“ _Call him._ ” And there’s the good old threatening tone again, promising that the man in front of him has more than a few reasons to leave Andy rotting beneath the floorboards of this dump. And despite the goliath’s sympathies, Andy hasn’t forgotten the unsettling hum still reverberating in his bones.

He can’t sit still for this – he _can’t._ He glances at both of them and pitches to his feet, pacing towards the wall and then back again. They watch him like curious dogs.

With the speakerphone still on he pages through the missed calls. It isn’t hard to find: the same 330 area code, spread out amongst the doc’s. It rings twice before picking up.

The guy on the other end listens for a few beats before chuckling warmly. “Finally figured out how to pick up the phone, huh? Good work, man! On the upswing, finally?”

Andy stares at the phone, shoulders working up to somewhere mid-ear with tension.

“Now, you remember how to _talk_ on the phone, right?”

He clears his throat. “What do you want?”

“Aw, c’mon. I know you were _listening._ ” The ‘evil id’ waits all of two seconds for a rebuttal before barreling on unchecked. “So, I heard you had a run-in with the boys in blue. And those Winchester brothers! Didn’t put a bullet in you, though?”

Andy looks up. They both stare back, neither confirming or affirming, but the name seems suitable. Winchester brothers. “Friends of yours?”

“No,” he answers. “I think they’ve got half a mind to kill me. ‘bout the same as you. Let’s see who’s going to get the chance first. I’ll give you a head start: Peoria. You’re not too far, I don’t think?”

“Not too far.”

“Fantastic. Well, nice talkin’ to you, man. One of these days let’s have a conversation that isn’t quite so one-sided, alright?”

His mouth works, but no rebuttal comes out. The phone goes silent.

“Peoria, huh,” Dean says thoughtfully.

Once his brain catches up with the words he turns fast enough to make his own head spin. “No. No no no. That’s the leaving-the-idiot-in-the-woods tone. No. You are not leaving me here.”

Dean says, “Sammy,” and Sammy steps forward. Andy takes three steps back. “Nuh-uh. Sammy. _Heel,_ Sammy.” Andy swerves left and the monolith swerves with him, grabbing him around the waist and throwing him over his shoulder like a rag doll. The phone goes tumbling out of his hands; Dean bends down to retrieve it while Andy bombards the goliath with a few choice words about his mother. Three long steps and he goes sprawling on the floor of the back room, the door slamming shut just as he lands a kick on it.

“Believe me, Andy, the farther you stay out of this the better,” Sam says from the other side.

Andy kicks the door again. “No fucking way! You are _not_ leaving me in the creepy ass cabin. Where _is_ this?”

“You’re twelve miles southeast of Wyandotte. Pick a road and walk it, you’ll find someone to sweet-talk eventually.”

Footfalls echo on the other side of the door, and then the front door creaks. Andy figures they’ve gone. He’s gathering himself for a full-on assault when Dean’s voice starts up, right on the other side: “Here’s how this works.” Badly startled, Andy stumbles and not so much hits the door as is-struck-by the door. Dean rolls onward, unfazed. “We’re hunting down your little stalker. He calls again, you call us. You run into him, you call us. Other than that, lay low and don’t give us a reason to chase you halfway across the country again.” He thinks for a minute, then adds, “Oh, and, you owe me about eighty dollars in gas. Just an FYI.”

The door hinges squeak again. On an afterthought Dean hollers, “Hey, what color were the guy’s eyes?”

With his face pressed into the splintering door, Andy groans, “What?”

“Eyes. What color?”

“Green,” Andy replies, wishing the son of a bitch could see him looking at him like he’s the fucking psychotic that he is.

“Huh.” The front door slams shut.

He shoulders and kicks and shoulders again, then starts yanking at the rust-flaked knob with mounting frustration (and desperation) as a car engine starts up outside. There’s about an inch of sunlight peeking past the doorframe when the cabin goes sickeningly quiet.

After that, he goes through the motions: anger first, sending a nearby chair tumbling with a kick; the support struts snap like matchsticks, legs collapsing in upon themselves. Then panic: the back room is smaller, claustrophobic, and just him. He chokes on the stifling air, skin prickling with the dust and rot of the place. First he thinks he’s gonna get trapped here, then he thinks he’s gonna _die_ in here, this shitty crumbling room with splinters jabbing out of every surface and probably lice or fleas or ticks or all three.

After he’s hyperventilated with his head tucked between his knees, he has the good sense to look around. It’s a small room, a rusted stove in one corner and a rusted bed-spring in the other. The window towards the northern end of the cabin is boarded shut, but the one in the back isn’t. The shattered windowpanes, bird feathers stuck to the jagged edges, look out onto a dense thicket of trees. The frame has swollen shut; he has to take to the wood and paint with a scrap of metal from the stove for a solid twenty minutes before he can shimmy it up to a point where he can squeeze through.

He lands badly on the other side, ending up on all fours with bruises on his knees and bits of pine cone in his palms. He chucks a rock at the already-broken window for good measure, sending a few of the shards clattering to the floor inside.

His cell phone is sitting on a stump out front. He snaps it up with a scathing look towards the only way the Winchesters could’ve gone. There’s a new entry in the Contacts. No name, just ‘:)’. A vague noise of disgust, another glance at the signal – a measly one bar, and roaming at that – and he sits down on the stump, hard. Sam hadn’t looked at accepted calls. It’s the same number, one after another. 330 area code. He hits send on the first entry.

One ring before the other end crows, “Andy!”

Andy scrubs a sleeve across his forehead. “Whoever they are—they’re dead, right?”

“Nah, not yet.” The rustle of fabric, shifting in a seat. “She’s bringing in groceries as we speak.”

“You don’t think she’s going to pass?”

“No one does.”

“I didn’t?”

“You haven’t yet, my man. So, how’d you talk the Winchesters down?”

“I told them I hallucinated you. You know that the one is—“

“Oh, Sammy boy? Yeah. He’s on the list, too.”

He has to ask it again: “Are they yours?”

“Really, man? _Those_ guys? They’re douches. Not that I’m not grateful, saved me the trip to bust you out of there.” A low laugh. “What were you thinking? The bar fight – that was impressive, but really? Jail?”

He bites down on his cheek, hard. “I don’t—“

“Just a piece of advice?” Ansem interjects, sharp and feral. “ _Play the game_. I’m getting real tired of dragging you along.”

He waits long enough for Andy to open his mouth, then adds, “Don’t say no, Andy.”

It’s a familiar dance: verbal parry, verbal thrust. Every conversation with the fucked-up thing that’s ruining his life is a negotiation in three-quarter step. And by the end he’s always back at the same place: twisted around a bottomless fury that’s tangled in helplessness. What was that phrase - _a cat tied to a stick_. Yeah, that’s fair.

“So are you coming or what?”

And he always gets back up. And he always hates himself for still being here, in this.

“Yeah, I’m coming.”

 

 

 

 


	5. Swift Hounds of Lússa: Part Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy evaluates his options.

PART FOUR

 

“Nor do they fear the woods and crags, nor huge lions  
And the frothing teeth of boars and the weapons of wild beasts.  
They rain down their own fire on every creature granted them.”  
\--Manlius, _Astronomica_

 

 

 

 

In Peoria, Andy can’t go in.

The detective leads him through the hallways of the house, talking animatedly of serrated wire and creativity and _damn, you’d never think someone could do that to themselves with a_ wire _but Jesus—_

Andy trails after him, nodding when the guy wants him to nod, laughing when the guy wants him to laugh. And then they’re at the end of the corridor, and he can’t. He balks. Digs his fingernails into the doorframe and just stops.

It smells. Sickly sweet, rich and heavy on the tongue.

The detective’s already in, pointing towards the red-streaked wall with a gloved hand. “You can see the spray right here, from the path of the arc we think it’s the femoral on the male Caucasian that was found lying right about there—“

When he catches sight of Andy pale in the doorway, all his gorey exuberance shuts off like a light switch. Familial concern, suddenly, downright human. “C’mon, let’s get you out of here. Air. This way. Get some air. Jesus, man, you shoulda told me you were squeamish—“

Fifteen minutes sitting on the front steps, head between his knees, but his resolve’s gone. He never goes in. He leaves with names, ages. Ava Wilson and her fiancé, a Brady Thompson. Murder-suicide. Just 23 years old. Tragic. And so unexpectedly brutal, for such a sweet-looking girl.

 

 

 

 

“Oh, come _on,_ Andy. You didn’t throw up this time, did you?”

“No,” Andy says. He’s studying the cracks in a motel ceiling, mind a clear slate.

“I couldn’t figure out what her specialty was,” Ansem continues. “I think it might’ve been an empathy thing. I almost lost my handle on her once she started cutting into the guy. Had to tell him to shut up so she could do her thing, y’know? Anyway, she put up a pretty good fight.” A thoughtful pause. “The wire thing, I made that up on the fly. Maybe that’ll be the new thing. Just whatever I find lying around.”

Andy lets his eyes fall shut. Ansem keeps talking.

 

 

 

He’d been angry, once. Desperate, raging, rabid with all of the too-fresh memories running through his head. The first call had involved a lot of shouting, a lot of threats. A lot of laughing from the other end.

It hasn’t _died,_ really; he just keeps it in check. There’s no other choice. He’s found an angle and he’s playing it: the complacent hostage. Ansem thinks he’s his brother; thinks he’s his keeper. That he’s doing Andy good.

Andy’s going to say what he has to until he can corner the bastard. He’s a dog on a leash, doing it’s damndest to find a way to bite the hand at the other end.

But it’s boring – and maddening. It’s spending four hours a day listening to a psychotic talk. And now another four fretting over the Winchesters, over whether they’ll change their mind and decide he does need a bullet to the head, or a psychic lobotomy.

The rest of the time, moving. Driving, walking, however many synonyms he can come up with for running.

 

 

“You could control me, right?” he asks Ansem, once.

Ansem sounds genuinely surprised: “Why would I?”

“Because you could.” And because Andy’s trying; really, really trying.

Ansem just waits a beat. Andy can almost hear the shrug over the phone. “So why would I?” He means, _Where’s the fun in that?_

 

 

Another time, he asks, “How do I win?”

“You’ll know when you do.” Smug son of a bitch.

He pulls the phone back, staring at the display. It’s blinding in the dark of the room.

On the other end, silence. Expectant.

He snaps the phone closed and curls onto his side.

 

 

 

 

The night after seeing Brady Thompson’s arterial spray, he dreams of the past unaltered. Sliding along the wall of the diner, shaking too hard to walk in a proper straight line. Catching the counter just in time to finally give and snap and break, hit his knees and stare at the feet curling up pale and delicate by the end of the bar. The sticky red soaking into her favorite white skirt. She only wore it to work once a month at most, afraid she’d do something clumsy and stain it.

That thought spurred him. _Stain, it might stain—_ stupid, _stupid_ and irrational but it’d been enough to get him forward, and then he’d seen. All of it. The knife and the blood and the sickly white sheen of something else in the thick gorey mess of it. He’d choked and moaned and grabbed a handful of apron, pressed it into the gaping yawning hole where a heart should be. Shoving the blood back in. The blood and the life and _everything._

No. No _no no no—“Don’t,_ Tracy, please, please—“

Something on his shoulders, pulling him back roughly, shoving him hard into the counter. Silverware rattled metallic somewhere overhead.

Ansem was ugly in that light, twisted up to something inhuman. “Don’t you see how pathetic this is, Andy? All this over _what?_ A doll. That’s all she is, Andy. That’s all they _are._ You _know_ that. You _know._ ”

Andy would reach up and shove him off, tear him away, but his hands are covered with blood, and if he touches anything he’ll stain it. Stain everything.

 

 

 

The next morning it’s Sam that calls, not Ansem. They talk for three minutes, and it all boils down to empty words. ‘Have you heard from him?’ ‘No.’ ‘You okay?’ ‘No.’ ‘Where are you?’ ‘Ohio, and it sucks.’

Even over the phone it’s like standing next to a high-power electrical line, _hearing_ the energy singing in the air. “Shit, man, you really got to get that looked at,” he concludes. Sam laughs politely and says goodbye.

He takes three aspirin and rolls off the bed, wondering if he slept at all. He can’t really remember.

 

 

 

It’s a Sunday. Tracy’s funeral service is in full swing. _No speech, Andy?_ Ansem asked the night before, and Andy said, _No._

 

The Winchesters and Ansem have it wrong: they never dated. Not officially. There were _dates,_ kind of, but only in the nominal sense of the word. Three or four brief spans of time spent alone. Neither of them in any particular rush, neither of them at all new to the two-step dance of this sort of thing. The second or third night they kissed and she leaned into his shoulder and said with a little laugh, “Y’know how many people have told me how perfect we are for each other?”

Andy had asked, “How many?” with a hollow lilt to his voice.

“Ok, only three, but that’s a lot for a social delinquent like you. I think they think I’ll straighten you out,” she confides with a grin, but she saw the look on his face and misread it. “It’s not them, though. I decided a long time before they opened their fat mouths. You’re a good guy, Andy. You’re a great guy. I love you.”

Andy can’t remember exactly what went through his mind just then, but he knows what he felt: the exact same abysmal cold he had the first time his dad had stepped back and regarded him like some abhorrent mix-up of a monster and a god.

After that it was over. Andy hadn’t run out of the room _right that moment,_ but he might as well have. It was all cold shoulder - or his warm, shadowed sort of cold shoulder, answering her calls three days too late and always forgetting the next date and slowly dropping visits to the diner down to once a day, once a week, once a month.

On July Fourth he’d wandered into the historic district block party and she’d made him sit on the courthouse steps and talk. She’d expressed her concern over how withdrawn he’s being, how he hasn’t replaced that job he lost four months ago, how he hasn’t done anything about his dad’s house, his dad’s estate. _You can’t just close your eyes and wait, Andy. You gotta_ do _things, y’know?_

He’d turned her words on her: _the diner, Tracy? That’s doing things?_ He’d convinced her that shift manager wasn’t a lifetime achievement, that she needed to go back to college. She’d eventually – reluctantly – agreed.

For the next two days he’d felt sick and lonely and miserable, prodding the depths of a new low, right up until someone grabbed him by the collar behind Gunther’s and asked, “ _Hey, you wanna see something?_ ”

 _I love you,_ she’d said, and he hadn’t heard honesty because he hadn’t _wanted_ to hear honesty. Now he’ll never know.

 

So, Sunday? Sunday goes to the library.

There are a lot of Winchesters in the continental United States, and Andy’s research is clumsy at best. Six days ago Jeremy Winchester of Utica, New York was at last betrothed to his high-school sweetheart. A Philip Winchester was involved in a DUI wreck outside of Pittsburgh four months ago. Carla Ann Winchester received a prestigious local scholarship in Wilmington, North Carolina two years ago. As of June 1996, police of Scranton, Ohio are searching for a John Winchester on grave desecration charges, of all things.

The name of John Winchester pulls a file: widower in 1983. Wife, Mary Winchester. Died in a house fire. The late Mrs. Winchester left a loving husband and two sons: Dean, age four, and Sam, only six months.

Three more hours gives him nothing more on the three of them.

A call to the Oklahoma Department of Health gets him the rest of what he’s looking for.

Andy Gallagher, age 23, born 06-30-1983. Residence: 1439 North Street, Guthrie, OK.

Sibling: Ansem Weems, age 23, born 06-30-1983. Residence: 510b Fordham Lane, Oklahoma City, OK.

The evil twin thing still makes him laugh, in an uneasy, panicked way. He’d believed him back in Guthrie; doesn’t mean he wanted to hear it confirmed.

 

 

 

Sam Winchester keeps him updated, sort of, in their brief talks. It’s always the same deal: _We’re looking. We’re looking. We’re looking._

Andy thinks the Winchesters are making it worse. Sometime he’s going to come back with, _You should hear how he talks about you two. His own personal Wyatt Earps. He’s playing a game, y’know? Cops and psycho murderers. I think he wants a Sundance Kid._

 

 

 

Eight days after Tracy took to herself with a butcher knife, Ansem finally says it: “Have you ever been to Idaho?”

Andy’s been expecting it. Planning speeches, even. _You don’t have to. You really, really don’t have to,_ and variations therein. But he can’t parse one out now – not an effective one – so Ansem just listens to the dumb silence for a good three seconds and then barrels on. “No? It sounds kind of lame.” His brother buffets the line with a sigh. “Aberdeen. 14 East Street. It’s a guy this time, if that’ll soothe your conscience.” After a thoughtful pause he adds, “How do you feel about screwdrivers?”

 

 

There’s a payphone outside of the Starlite Motel’s main office. He calls the police from there, just a curt anonymous tip.

After that he climbs in his car and drives.

 

 

 

Aberdeen is shitty. Dirt driveways, dirt roads. Old trucks scrubbed clean by the grit. Patchwork lawns and little ticky-tacky houses painted in 1950’s pastels, with trailers rusting on the lots in-between.

From the outside Cole Saracco’s house is a miserable little box, the lawn around it a foot too long and burnt a gray, bland yellow. He was an agriculture student at the University of Idaho, over in Pocatello. Got kicked out of his dad’s house in Idaho Falls three years ago.

The mailbox, propped up on a pile of cinderblocks, is wrapped up in enough _CAUTION CUIEDADO_ tape to stretch to the state line and back. Apparently they’d run out of _CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS_ tape in the copasetic town of Aberdeen.

The dust of the driveway is splattered with splotches of dried-up red.

Andy sees all this from across the street; he doesn’t walk any closer than that. The Chevy Impala parked out front has him standing by the car door, staring at the house from a distrustful three hundred feet.

When the tall drink of water slips out the back door and saunters straight towards him, Andy doesn’t think to run. He just stands and stares, reading the quiet fury in Sam Winchester’s long strides with a morbid brand of curiosity. Sam stops a good four feet away. “Get out of here.”

“I didn’t—“

“You were supposed to call us.”

“You?” Social skills at an all-time low, Andy’s laughing and wondering if it sounds as unhinged to everyone else as it does to him. “ _You?_ Peoria! That girl-- you were supposed to save _her!_ You haven’t done a goddamned thing!”

Sam listens with little condescending head-bobs, even allows a few seconds of silence for the words to sink in before he asks, “You called the cops, right?”

Andy stares at him, abruptly pale under the hot Idaho sun.

“You don’t know what you’re doing, Andy. That’s two more people dead because of it. So just don’t… do… anything. Alright?”

Been there. Tried that.

He gives a stiff nod, anyway.

The psychic seems to buy it. Glances at the house uncertainly and rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “You can do one thing for me. Have you heard of a Holly Beckett?”

Andy has. He shakes his head.

“The guy wrote it on the floor. Look her up for me.”

Just like that, he walks away.

Andy climbs back into the car and digs his fingernails deep into the pliable rubber of the steering wheel.

 

 

 

He’d bet his own Jedi powers that Holly Beckett’s name was not on the floor of the trailer. Sam was baiting him; dragging him along. Keeping him engaged, but distanced. Busy.

Andy’s tired of being dragged along.

Holly Beckett burned. From what the cops can figure it, she locked her twelve-year-old daughter’s bedroom door and set the room on fire.

That was three days before his father’s funeral.

Ansem was there. The funeral, that is. But Andy’s pretty sure he was standing in that burning bedroom, too.

He didn’t recognize him at the time, of course. The whole thing was a blur of old ladies and not-that-charming cousins he’d never met, all of them looking at him like the adorable little adopted son that he was. All of them hating him, just a little, for the decent-sized inheritance that he didn’t care about. That didn’t last, of course. By the end of the day he had them all caring a little less about money and blood, and a little more about _oh, what a sweet boy, that Andy Gallagher._

Then there were the two insurance agents, kind of weird timing, equally weird questions. From the best Andy could figure it they were angling towards a polite, _What are the chances that you offed your father?_ Makes sense now, of course, what with bugfuck crazy in his gene pool.

At the church straight up through the reception he kept seeing this guy, always on the edge of this or that cluster of people. Never really _looking_ at him, but in that way that makes your skin crawl, knowing that every time you turn your head he’s staring straight at your neck.

He’d closed up a conversation with the Rotary Club president, turned around, and the guy was _there_ , right in his face. Andy had frozen up like an idiot, of course, completely freaked. But the guy didn’t knife him; just patted him on the shoulder like every uncle, grand-uncle, and 20-something cousin twice removed in the room had. He hadn’t said anything; no _sorry for your loss,_ no _let me know if you need anything at all, man._ He’d just stared at him. And Andy had stared back. Said, “Do I know you?” He’d shook his head like he was disappointed, said, “Y’don’t,” and just as abruptly left.

The Winchesters had strolled in right about then. He didn’t see Ansem after that. Not until two months later.

 

 

 

 

He’d been halfway to Georgia before the whole thing had caught up with him.

Almost totaled the car, he hit the gravel shoulder so fast. The tires screamed, the back wheels fishtailed, and he spilled out of the car before the thing had even stopped moving. There’d been screaming, he knows. He’d wrecked his throat on the screaming. After that, an empty span of time; just zenned out in a dark and abysmal way. He didn’t move until headlights broke the horizon and even then it was just basic instinct pressing his shoulders into the rusting bumper, putting his heart to pace with a frightened rabbit’s. The truck roared past. It never even slowed.

He _knows_ there was time after that, can measure it between two fingers. The three joints that had been in his jacket pocket disappeared, and he’s pretty sure he smoked them, mostly sure anyway; the wad of cash there dwindled to three dollars and twenty cents, and he knows he had to get gas somewhere, sometime. But it was just zen, all that driving. Long empty roads, never thinking much at all.

 

 

 

Smyma, Georgia, he’d bought a coffee and gotten rid of the car. Traded up for a ’97 Chevy with gale-force A/C. And then it was just wandering – driving – escaping. If he didn’t stop, he’d never have to think about it. Ansem fucking Weems. Twin fucking brothers. And Tracy—

Hadn’t lasted, of course. Not with the dreams. He dreamt every time he closed his eyes: Tracy bleeding, Tracy dying, and the man with yellow eyes, always armed with some witty maxim to stab raw fear straight between his ribs.

On the second day, he’d woken up to his phone ringing, and he’d answered.

He’d screamed and threatened and ranted and Ansem had laughed, absolutely delighted, absolutely unfazed.

 

 

On the fourth day he’d started a bar fight and turned himself in.

 

 

On the eighth, he decides to retaliate in turn.

 

 

 

 


	6. Swift Hounds of Lússa: Part Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy takes up pursuit.

PART FIVE

  


 

“Do not be surprised at such a character under such a star:  
You see how even this star itself hunts among the stars;  
It seeks to catch by chase the Hare that proceeds it.”  
\--Manlius, _Astronomica_

 

 

 

 

His intentions are vague, at best, right up until he climbs the front steps. Finding a weak point. There’s that. Some irrational pride, some _weakness_ that he hasn’t found in their conversations. Part of him is thinking of kidnapping. He doesn’t have to kill her. He _won’t_ kill her. How the hell could he think of killing her?

The woman that answers the door is well into her golden years - late 60s, if not older. A paisley-print dress, jewelry that looks like it was from one flea market or another. Quaint. Normal. Her arms and hands are roped with veins, a slight palsy making the left one tremor unless she grips it tight with the right. There’s something off there, in the gnarled fingers – he can’t place it immediately. It’s not until he’s at the kitchen table that he realizes the left pinky is severed above the second knuckle.

He gets ushered into the house without much more than a, “Hey, I’m uh—“ Marissa Weems sits him down at the dinner table and gives him tea, even after he insists several times that he’s fine.

There’s no elaborate story to build up. “I’m his brother, Andy – biologically, I mean. We got split up in the adoption. I wanted to get to know him, is all. And, I mean, you’d be the expert, right?” He throws in a nervous little laugh at the end for good measure.

“I recognize you,” she replies matter-of-factly, bobbing her head. “Ansem said you would come.”

Mock surprise. “He did?”

“Before he left. He’s been travelling for quite awhile now. He calls now and then.” Her eyes gloss over, mouth trembling – then she continues just as abruptly as she had stopped. “I never do remember what we talk about. My mind these days. But oh, I remember everything about my Ansem growing up.”

“He was a good kid?”

“He said you’d probably ask that,” she says with a smile and a nod. “Dear, you should know that childhood means nothing. You and he were only human then, after all.”

“When did he—“ He waves a hand vaguely, but she seems to understand.

“Oh, when he was seven. I was in the kitchen, chopping vegetables, and…” She holds up her hand, waggling the truncated finger. “Hardly even stung.”

He clears his throat, looking down at the patchwork of the tablecloth. “Right. So, uh… does he have a lot of friends? A girlfriend, or anything?”

“You’re a good boy, Andy. And intelligent.” Her smile’s saccharine. “That eye-for-an-eye mentality hardly becomes you.”

He can hear him – Ansem – under every word she says. It’s obvious she’s nothing more than a puppet. Years and years and years of it, he can’t expect otherwise.

Nonetheless, it’s nauseating. Mothers twice removed, Andy can’t even fathom it.

“Ansem’s above that now,” she’s saying proudly.

“What else did he think I’d ask?”

“Oh… Well I just can’t remember. I do remember what he told me to tell you, of course.”

“Right.”

“He’s so enamored with you. Always wanted a sibling, you know, and finding out about you… He was delighted.”

“So he told you—“

“Getting there. So, of course he had to arrange it just right – meticulous, he always was, in the strangest ways – and the funeral, well, that fit just perfect. Then those Winchesters showed up. Conniving little snipes, with their list. What a list! The list changed everything, you see.”

“The list—“ Andy repeats slowly. “The list of names.”

“Of course!”

“He got it from the Winchesters?”

“The Winchesters, yes. Until then, he thought it was just you! But with the list, he found a purpose. Proving their mettle. Six, so far!”

“Seven,” Andy corrects.

“Oh, seven? Delightful. So there you have it! Where it all began. Your papa’s funeral. The catalyst, Ansem called it. And he proclaimed your parting speech superb, if a bit generic.”

“How did he get it? Did they give it to him? Did he talk it out of them?”

“Well, now, I don’t really know…”

“Mrs. Weems, this is important. Just— _try,_ alright?”

She shakes her head placidly. “I can’t, I’m afraid.”

“Do you understand what he’s _doing?_ ”

“Of course! Killing people. And quite well, I imagine. He always does things well. Ansem gets what he wants.”

“ _Tell me how he got it._ Are the Winchesters helping him?”

“The Winchesters? Of course. They wrote the list. I said that, didn’t I? Oh, dear, don’t tell me I forgot.”

“You didn’t forget…”

“I didn’t? Oh, good. Oh! The last thing he told me. Yes, yes, can’t forget that either…”

“Mrs. Weems—“

She stands up and shuffles to a cupboard, shuffling through first one drawer, then the next. Andy rises from the chair, voice turning plaintive. “Mrs. Weems, listen—“

She isn’t. She just keeps tottering around, shuffling and rearranging and then heading to the next cabinet, a knitted cozy spread neatly over top. “Ansem makes sure I never forget. Not the important things, no. Ah, here.”

He doesn’t realize what it is at first, because it’s absurd, palsied arthritic hands gripping a handgun so perfectly.

The aim is just as perfect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sam Winchester answers on the third ring.

Andy doesn’t give him time for greetings. “You son of a bitch.”

“What? Andy—“

“The list. _Your_ list. You started this. _You._ ”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m not _doing_ this anymore. You know who Holly Beckett is. You knew the week she died. And if you hadn’t been playing Big Brother at my dad’s funeral he never would’ve gotten that goddamn list from you. This is on _your hands,_ do you get that?”

“The list? You mean—Ansem’s using _our_ list to hunt them down?”

“No, no no no. You don’t get to play dumb. It was you.”

“According to who?”

“His mother, that’s who.”

“Andy, he didn’t get the list from us. We talked to him _once_ , over a year ago - he’s got to be finding them on his own, somehow—“

“ _He got them from you._ He was—“

Shit. _Shit._

He was at the funeral.

“He was _what?_ ”

Andy can’t think clear enough to lie. He snaps the phone shut.

 

 

 

The talk with Sam came after, of course. First was Ansem. Ansem while he scrubbed at the specks of blood on his shirt, sitting crammed up against the banister of the back steps because that’s as far as he’d been able to stumble. Ansem before even the goddamned police, Ansem.

“It’s over,” is how he starts the conversation, and his words tremble across the line.

“It is?”

“You told your own _mother_ to—“ He grasps for a properly brutal turn of phrase. “—to.”

“Kill herself,” Ansem finishes. “What, Andy? Don’t be such a baby about it.”

“Jesus Christ,” Andy whispers, curling into a deeper crouch.

“So you talked to my mom,” his brother adds conversationally. And there’s that tone cropping up again – that goddamned tone, naively bewildered at all of Andy’s hesitation and fear. “We’re even now. One for one.”

He swallows back spit and bile and says, “I’m not chasing you anymore, man.”

“So you wanna go, then?” Andy surmises casually. “You sure you’re ready?”

He stares at the grass and thinks, _I’m tired._ Says, “Cut the bullshit, Ansem.”

“Alright.” This tone is different: disappointed. It hooks in his stomach, cold and sharp. “Kittery Point, Maine. There’s this awesome oyster joint – Steve’s Sea-sations, or some shit.”

“Be there this time,” Andy demands.

“I will be,” his brother promises.

 

 

 


	7. Swift Hounds of Lússa: Part Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A meeting of brothers.

PART SIX

 

“But when the Nemean arises in vast, gaping jaws,  
Then brilliant Sirius appears, and barks forth flames  
It raves with its own fire and doubles the blaze of the sun.”  
\--Manilius, _Astronomica_

 

 

 

 

Maine uses seashells as gravel.

Andy finds that weird.

Seashells are the kinds of things old ladies polish and prop up on windowsills to remind them of their younger years, that one trip to Atlantic City or Daytona when they were young and svelte and happy. They aren’t chalky white carcasses to be ground up under so many truck tires and nervous stumbling footsteps.

There’s probably a conch in there, or a baby ear, or one of those – the hell are they called – nautiluses.

Do nautili have shells?

He thinks too much when he’s scared.

He’s fucking _terrified._

He’d found the place a half an hour ago, then turned around and parked a quarter mile up the road. Getting out right there, in the open? No way. No. Walking wasn’t really a choice; he _had_ to, or he was going to freak out, just start _screaming_ until someone sedated him or his goddamn head exploded.

From Oklahoma to Indiana, he was pissed off -- righteous. Ohio to New York, determined. It wasn’t up until New Hampshire that he started shaking so bad. Righteous and determined are fine when you’re three hundred miles away. Two hundred, one hundred, fifty, and then zero, that’s… something else.

Walking is good; it’s calming to move, shake off a little of the panic rattling in his chest. He’ll be calm once he gets there. Calm, cool, collected. He doesn’t have a weapon. He has a plan – a hazy, dumbass kind of plan. But if he has to, Andy thinks he’ll kill him.

He sticks to the stand of trees on the edge of the parking lot. The fallen pine needles dampen the crunch of the shells, some. The pier’s a relatively innocuous looking thing, settled over the restless ocean. There’s a good forty foot drop from boardwalk to the churning water. The surf’s decent, even a ways in on the coastline. The radio was saying something about storms off shore kicking up the water a bit.

Attention set on the dim lights strung up down the pier, he doesn’t see the car – not until it’s _right there,_ stopping him in his tracks. The Impala’s looking a little less cherry these days, too much road dust clogging up the finish, but it’s an impossible car to mistake, and it fits nowhere in his plans. “Shit.” His hands drift up to clutch at his temples. _“Shit.”_

Shadowed motion mirrored in the windshield gives him about enough warning to get through a half-turn. By then there’s an iron grip on his neck and the next comprehensive thought is something along the lines of _fucking OW_ once his head has ricocheted off the ‘67’s fender. Coherence’s a little hazy after that; he gets pulled back like a rag doll, limbs akimbo, and slammed hard into the door. He catches the frame and pushes, but he’s being _pushed_ harder, his fingers slipping on the chrome as the door handle digs into his hip. Something dense and cold taps against the back of his neck, and dazed logic suggests he be very, very still.

“I owe you. You helped me win my bet.”

Dean. Dean Winchester.

He recognizes the voice, and the cause, and the motive, but the world’s blurred and the only thing he can come up with to say is, “Wha—“

His neck prickles as the pressure there doubles. “Don’t. Say. Anything.”

Oh. A gun. Well that makes sense.

“I’ve seen fucked up, but this is fucked up. Really? He guts your girlfriend and you join up with him? How screwed up is your head?”

Andy studies the pier. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for. A gunshot, maybe.

Dean keeps going. “It’s not worth knowing, this. Any of this. _Any_ of this.” He pauses – hesitates – and Andy tries to read it for what it is. Uncertainty. Uncertainty over what? Over the skinny kid he’s bench pressing? Over the words coming out of his own mouth? Maybe he’s thinking this isn’t worth it. The bad guy’s inside, after all.

No; he’s saying, “Killing seven of your own in some freak power contest, and that’s not even the start. Twenty four of you that we can find, and twelve of you gone now. Half of you. Twenty-one years old and half of you are dead.”

Maybe he’s thinking he should just let Andy go. Maybe he’s thinking he’s wrong.

But Dean isn’t wrong. He isn’t a bad person. And he’s convinced Andy is. One more psychic freak plunging headlong over the edge.

“Seeing your girl dead.”

What does that mean? What does that _mean._ Two cops and seven kids and Tracy Derringer – he hasn’t stopped it. Tried to, trying to, but he hasn’t yet.

Neither have they.

“Seeing Max Miller impale his own mother.”

And Ansem—

 _Fuck._ Ansem.

 _You don’t want to do this_. His hands are cramping from gripping the car so tightly. _You don’t want to do this._

“And then—“ a laugh “--my own brother fries Max Miller from the inside out without moving a muscle.” A shift of fabric as he shakes his head. “You aren’t human. You aren’t controllable.”

_You’re going to—_

“Why’d you do it.”

And there’s the sticking point.

“What was it?”

Fear. And panic. And fear. That’s all he can hear in those words.

For his brother, of course. Same fucked-up batch of kids. Dean wants to fix it. Stop it. Cure him of whatever this is.

He’s scared.

Andy’s scared, too. It deserves an answer. He doesn’t know how to answer it.

The silence is answer enough for Dean.

He feels it coming more than anything, a rush of cold snapping through his veins.

_STOP_

Too loud; he’s panicking, absolutely fucking _freaked_ because he can _feel_ Dean’s finger tightening on the trigger. He’s lucky the flinch doesn’t get him shot anyway; the man recoils, stumbles against the door of the truck behind him.

Andy presses his back against the Impala’s passenger window, sputtering, “I don’t know. I _don’t know._ ” Dean isn’t listening; he’s pulling his arm up faster than Andy can think to counter, so he just throws himself clumsily aside. The gunshot is loud, skull-cracking kind of loud, and that’s it. A gut reaction of panic and despair.

When his head stops buzzing with the discharge, he finds himself pressed against the chassis, hands curled into his hair. Dean’s slumped against the panel truck’s front tire, blood on a black free-flow from one nostril, and Andy thinks he’s dead.

Crouched over the body, breathing in great heaves of air. He wants to see breath – feel a heartbeat – but if there isn’t one he’s going to snap. Really, legitimately snap.

So he doesn’t.

He runs.

 

 

 

It takes ten strides to reach the pier. By twenty he’s at the shack. It’s dark, doors locked shut.

There are two lights strung up for the hundred foot stretch of dock past the shack. Neither give enough lighting to be of much use. All he can see of the man at the end of the pier is the Cheshire grin he knows so well. He doesn’t even see the woman, not at first. She’s pressed into the crook where the railings meet, face flat as a porcelain doll’s. There’s a knife in her hand. The edge of her nightgown’s hem is torn, and Andy doesn’t want to think what that means.

Ansem’s looking at him, and Andy plays his part: turns away disinterested and says, “How long’ve you been playing them?”

Ansem just leans back and grins. “So you killed him.”

“You were controlling him.”

He puts up his hands in a casual peace offering. “I told him where to be. Maybe loosened his tongue a bit. Don’t look so insulted, I wasn’t making it easy for you or anything. I just set up the field and let ‘im loose, y’know?”

“That was the set-up, right?” _Cool and casual, Andy. Cool and casual._ He levels his voice. “Me chase them, them chase me, I kill them?”

“Lookit you,” Ansem mocks. “And you _passed._ ”

“What about the other one?”

“Sammy boy? Figured he’d be a challenge for the both of us.” He waves a hand. “He’s been chasing an empty lead in town. Somewhere Dean-o got the miraculous idea that it’d be good to wait back here, away from the big bad mind-control guy. I know – uncanny, right? It’s a small world after all.”

Andy looks at the girl. She doesn’t look back; her eyes are focused somewhere on the shoreline. “And her?”

“Just a bit of fun. A palm reader from in town. I have to say, I did _not_ expect her to be this good-looking.”

Andy forces a smirk. “A palm reader?”

“What? It’s a respectable skill, professional liar an’ all. Besides, who knows, she might be interesting.” He reaches out, traces her jaw line with his fingernails. Canines flash in his grin when he turns back on Andy. “So, you already dealt with Winchester. C’mon, what’s one pretty girl.”

Andy just shrugs. “I’m insulted, is all. You think I can’t handle a real psychic?”

He spreads an arm, a dramatic gesture, reminiscent of a magician at the big reveal. “Notice that she’s still alive.”

Whatever hold Ansem has on her, he lets it go. The doll bursts to life: eyes flit wide and startled, chest starts heaving faster and faster still. After a few seconds of trembling confusion she grips the knife tighter, frightened eyes darting between them both in horrified confusion. Under Ansem’s stare he has no choice. He steps forward. She looks at him, then; he hesitates.

Ansem sees it.

The woman’s shoulders draw up straight and even. Ansem’s expression doesn’t shift. In a slow, smooth gesture she draws the blade across her forearm with all the dramatic flourish to be expected of a faux mystic. No sleight of hand here: blood wells up thick and black in its shadow.

She doesn’t even look pained.

Then Ansem lets go again, and she’s sobbing, the knife dropping to the ground as she presses shaking fingers to her arm. Andy’s staring, gaping; Ansem barks, “Christ, Andy. Come _on!”_

He jumps like he’s been punched. Slowly, he withdraws his fingers into fists.

His voice draws out slow and steady, a wire pulled thin. “Pick up the knife.”

He plays the real hand beneath.

_Pick it up._

Ansem leans back against the railing, looking pleased. Andy goes on, monotone. “Now turn it towards your throat.”

_Easy to move this way. You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay._

The twist of his brother’s lips splits into a smile.

 _Now, back_.

The quick slash of the blade shouldn’tve missed – shouldn’tve at all, the woman’s weak but not slow and there’d been no obvious tell that Andy could see – but Ansem just takes a smooth step aside and in a too-controlled tone tsks, “Andrew…”

Just as swiftly she’s shoving her way away from the railing. The flash of white nightgown on his periphery registers with Andy faster than the knife moving towards him; he twists and hears cloth rip, but there’s no pain, and his hand’s on her wrist, the order resonating before he can speak it – “ _No, HIM_ —“ and their tortured puppet is twisting again, but Ansem’s mutating his expression into a righteous sneer and raising a hand, fingers spread wide.

Andy watches, perplexed, as the outstretched fingers swiftly draw into a fist.

The woman doesn’t scream. She gargles, and bright scarlet streams down the front of her dress in a startling rush from ears, mouth, nose. The knife clatters against the boards.

He can _hear_ it.

It’s nothing he’s ever heard: a dismantling. The frequency ripped apart, crushed and ripped apart all at once. He claps his hands over his ears but it’s not enough; the force of it drives him to his knees.

Their puppet drops dead between them.

Ansem knees him in the face, grabs him by the collar to keep him still, keep him looking straight at him.

“Really, man? _Really?_ ”

“It doesn’t make you better,” Andy sputters. His head’s still humming.

“Andy. Andy Andy _Andy._ ” He shoves him, hard, almost knocking him flat. He catches himself on his left foot, hands thrown up in some pitiful defense. Ansem just keeps on coming. “Have you heard a _goddamn word I’ve said.”_

“Every one.” The inflection’s flat.

Ansem paces back a few feet, shakes his head like he’s waving off a bee. When he reels back on him, he barks a laugh. “ _Really?_ ‘cause I don’t think you—“

The metallic click of a hammer being engaged draws them both back to the world at large. Two steady footsteps resound behind him as Sam Winchester steps out into the open. He’s got the gun trained on Ansem: “Stop. Hands _up_ and don’t fucking move.”

Ansem holds up his hands, but only about halfway, looking bored more than anything. “There’s nobody there, Sam. You’re not seein’ anything. Just a corpse.”

Andy backs up. Sam doesn’t track the movement. “…What are you doing?”

“He’s not seeing me. Brilliant, right? I’m _the invisible man._ ”

Sam lowers the gun with a frown and a fitful shake of the head.

“It doesn’t work on him,” Andy insists. “Nothing does.”

“It works on anyone and everything. Just gotta be loud enough.” He raises his voice to a friendly shout: “Hey, Winchester. Shoot her in the head.”

At first, there’s nothing – he’s still studying the salt-flecked wood where they’re standing pensively. But then he’s moving back three smooth steps, taking the gun in both hands again. Face already streaked with blood, the woman doesn’t shift as he takes aim and pulls the trigger. Gore splashes thick and hot across the boardwalk.

Andy flinches. Ansem laughs. “Have you ever listened? They justify it. They justify anything you tell them. It’s so goddamn pathetic.” He grabs him by the shoulders, shoving him into the wall hard enough to make the boards clatter. Sam jumps and looks straight at them, but sees nothing. _Look,_ Andy thinks. _Look, look_ , look, _goddamnit, see us standing right here_ —Ansem hisses, “I could talk you into throwing yourself off a goddamn building, and you’d be happy going down.”

“But then you’d be alone,” he murmurs. Thinks, _Right here, Sam, RIGHT HERE._

Ansem smiles pityingly. “The funeral? I was gonna tell you everything, right there. Bring you with me. But then I saw you pandering to all of those idiots, trying to fit into their neat little reality, and I thought I was wrong. I thought He had lied to me.”

Andy shakes his head. “He?”

“You were just so— _pathetic_ , Andy. We were supposed to see eye to eye on this. You were supposed to _get it_. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along! You see? That? Right there?” He gestures to the woman, face shattered. To Sam puzzling over the empty air where they’re standing. “That’s _weak_ , Andy. We’re stronger than that.”

He seizes his brother by the shoulders, voice cracking with the ferocity of his words. “You’re _human_ , Ansem. They’re human and we are too. We break a few rules, but that’s it. We’re not— _gods_ , or something. We’re just—“

“Different,” Ansem sneers, and shoves him off. “Look, if you’re not gonna listen to me, you should at least listen to him.” The name’s got weight, weight that implies a capital ‘H’. And by the fervent look in Ansem’s eye, it has nothing to do with a good Christian upbringing.

“Listen to… who.”

“The yellow-eyed man,” Ansem says matter-of-factly, and Andy stares at him.

Dean had asked, _What color were the eyes?_

His brother stills, frowns, scrutinizing Andy closely. “I mean—he came to you in your dreams, right?” He scoffs. “Of course he did. He came to all of us.”

“No.” _She tastes good, y’know_. He shakes his head violently. “No, man, no – I have no freaking _clue_ what you’re talking about. Dreams?”

“You had to have seen him.” He looks like Andy just punted his goddamn puppy, for god’s sake.

“ _Dreams_ , Ansem? Shit, you-- you killed all of these people over _dreams?_ ”

“He didn’t tell me to do this. He told me about you, and the rest was just _fate_. That I was there to hear their questions? To hear them talking about us? And from there, it just made sense. We’re his soldiers. His children. We have to be perfect – and so do they. If they can’t fight me, they don’t deserve to live.”

“Live for what, Ansem? They’re dreams! Dreams aren’t _real!_ ”

He’s caught up in the words and the moment; doesn’t see the wrath blooming, not until Ansem’s looking over his shoulder. The next words come from neither of them: a curt and cold, “Back away,” and another metallic click.

Andy punches Ansem in the face.

“Get out of here,” he snaps to Sam.

Sam snarls back, “I wasn’t talking to him.”

Ansem sits up from the floor with a wide grin.

The second gun on him this evening, and this one in his face. For a good ten seconds Andy’s staring blankly, trying to make sense of it.

“No no no. Get out of here—“ and then just as quickly looking at the body and back at Sam Winchester’s gun and adding, “It wasn’t me. I didn’t—You can’t be here, man, just _leave_.”

But Sam’s there, Sam looking confused and then livid, isn’t saying _anything_ , just advancing on Andy with wrath scripted neatly on his face. “Don’t. You know it wasn’t me. You know it.”

The safety’s already off. Just a bit of pressure on that hair trigger.

Panic and dread and everything his life’s been since Tracy left.

When he sees that flashpoint of resolve, he shouts, “ _Sam GET OUT OF HERE—“_

_It’s a pathway. Just a different kind of thread to pull._

And there it is.

Sam looks absolutely bewildered, and then merely alien – pulling away in a mechanical gesture of submission. Andy draws a constricted breath and then Ansem is on them both with an intensity that sends Andy reeling.

 _SHOOT_ and _DON’T_. Sam’s legs give. Orders from both directions - probably something no normal person would’ve lived. Andy reels and Ansem laughs. He hits the boards with enough force to shake half the pier.

Andy’s on his knees and feeling for a pulse without thought, just thinking _please please shit PLEASE not you not you_ before everything goes quiet with a sharp, “Andy.”

Sam’s looking at him, glazed and half-lidded. Ansem’s hooking his fingers into his brother’s will, saying, “Get the hell up.”

The only thing Andy can compare this emotion to is nausea, but nausea like his entire body fighting to turn itself inside out. There’s no way to forcefully expel _this_ from his body – an unavoidable urge, as much internal as external. He shakes, trembles, sweats. Gathers his legs beneath him and slowly climbs to his feet.

“Andy. Andy!” A sharp slap on his cheek and Andy looks at crazed mad-dog eyes. “You listening?”

Some part of Andy nods. The rest of him’s watching with wide eyes.

“Trial’s over.” Ansem sighs expansively. He claps his hands on Andy’s shoulders, and Andy bites off a short, “Fuck you.” Ansem just smiles. “I tried. Really did. But even He’s given up on you.”

Andy doesn’t move, doesn’t talk. His brother doesn’t want him to.

“What I want you to do,” Ansem says, “is walk to that railing right there. You see it?”

Another nod.

Ansem leans closer and says, “Then climb right up there and jump, Andy. It’s not as cold as they say. Jump and sink. It’ll be peaceful. No more anything.”

It will be. A smooth wash of salt and brine over his face and the muggy starry sky will be blurred swirls of green and blue. The water’s cool, warm even, a lukewarm embrace from every mother dead twice over. Like every lazy summer day free of the Mad Dog.

Andy hooks a foot in the slippery rung of the railing, fingers cramping as they grasp the slick wood of the balustrade too hard. The railing’s cold but the water will be warm.

He breathes the mist and thinks the clearest and emptiest he ever has.

He says, “Come with me.”

A glance over his shoulder to see the same emotions that had crossed his own face toy with his twin brother’s: confusion and shock and a flirt with anger. Andy just smiles complacently. “You’re right. It’s warm, even. C’mon.”

_Come with me. Brothers, right? We’re brothers. Do this and we’ll be brothers._

Confusion-shock-anger-complacence.

Shoes scuffling on damp wood; Ansem steps forward, resting his palms against the wood. Climbs up one rung, two, to match Andy, and stares down at the churning water.

A wave rolls in. The pier shudders beneath them with the force of it.

Andy seizes him by the collar before Ansem can doubt.

The fall is longer than he thought it would be, and the impact with the water’s an impact with a cold concrete slab. Mortician’s table, maybe. Every muscle seizes with the collision alone, and the shock expels the breath from his body. Water black and turbulent, pouring over his head in a rush; he regains the surface in a state of stunned astonishment, sputtering and gasping, thinking hysterically, _well, shit, what now._

Ansem is behind him, splashing and coughing and raging. Fingernails dig into his scalp and he’s back underwater, inhaling brine, drowning drowning _drowning--_

A surge catches them both and the crest tears them apart; Andy coughs saltwater and seizes his brother by the upper arms, riding the wave to its trough. They hit a support piling head-on, caught up in sea spray and crushing force. Ansem goes limp. Andy fights desperately to work his fingers free of his jacket, let him sink with the weight of all the blood on him—

In the lee of the surf Ansem comes up laughing and breathless. Spits water to laugh some more. “It’s warm, right?” He grabs Andy’s neck and Andy seizes his wrist but his fingers are slipping, seizing up with the cold.

Three times Ansem slams his head into the piling. The barnacles encrusted there snap and crumble into fractured shards. Ansem swipes a hand across Andy’s forehead and shows him. It’s black in the moonlight, and his grin is feral. “See? Warmer already.”

Once more for good measure, and Andy goes blissfully limp. Complacent.

Ansem grins in his face and lets him go.

One last shuddering gasp of wet air and his clothes do the work. He sinks like an anchor.

For the three seconds before the current drags him beneath the black of the pier, he can still see the stars through the haze of water burning his eyes. If anything, that pisses him off. He hooks his fingers into the cuff of Ansem’s jeans.

The next surge throws him into a tumble, just so much flotsam. Ansem hits the piling sidelong and then he’s under too, breath leaving him in a rush of turbid water. Andy wraps his legs around him and holds on to his own air.

Ansem twists and shoves and _screams_ and Andy can’t feel it. Any of it. Everything slows and Ansem’s slowing, too, and Andy’s last breath is a drawn-out sigh.

The water’s warm, after all – warm and numb.

 

 

 

 

The jetty is an obscure collection of oblique shapes, the first glimpse Andy gets of it. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. It won’t fit right in his comprehension.

Then the ocean picks him up for the next lazy roll and the edges turn sharp.

He has time to let his brother go and give two sloppy strokes for the surface before the wave carries him onto the rocks, and every notion of numb chases out of him. It’s luck that keeps him from being crushed against some sharp edge; as it is, he slices one arm open when he throws both up to protect his skull. There’s rebar in the shattered concrete, rusted and dull and brutal. He only realizes that after the fact.

Winded in the ocean’s retreat, he takes two greedy draughts of air before crawling a desperate foot or three up the piled rocks.

When he looks back for the next wave, he sees his brother rising, unresisting, on the surf. He sees the edge of a concrete slab and marks the path, knows the consequence following, but he turns away only long enough to take the brunt of the wave on the chest, concrete beating its imprint into his back and shoulders.

In the retreat he can’t think to move anymore. Ansem hangs where he hit. Face a mess of red and pale gristle that Andy can’t make sense of. Crucified on the rocks - a patch of iron rebar prising his rib cage apart and pinning him like an insect project.

Two-three-four. He loses count of the ocean’s beatings. Just arbitrary numbers, now. Every wash carries a dark black flood of red deeper out to sea. Chum.

Four-five-six. Bruised and dazed and the stars are crisp and mocking overhead.

Six-seven-eight.

Eight-nine-ten.

He’s still staring dully when someone reaches under his arms and starts dragging him out of the breakwater. It’s not until the spray is slapping his face that the visceral horror digs into him, tearing through his stomach and straight to his spine; he twists in an animalistic panic, kicking away from the unasked-for help. He’s weak, pathetic, nothing left in slippery numb muscles – but the prying hands just let him go, and he collapses unceremoniously onto his ass. He catches a glimpse of Sam Winchester’s profile before rolling onto his side, vomiting salt and brine.

“You had to,” Sam says.

Andy can’t think of a rebuttal strong enough.

The goliath Winchester ends up passing Andy like a rag-doll to Dean, who’s got his feet planted on either side of the rusted access ladder. The lock that was supposed to be keeping it closed to the public has been shot off and thrown to the side. Dean rolls him up onto the dock, and Sam follows, elbows bent at absurd angles to fit into the cramped confines of the rungs.

The space between pier and car is a blur, but he recognizes the smooth curves of the Impala in the millisecond-eternity he spends leaning against the trunk. The only thing Andy asks for is a bottle of water. He takes three sips before passing out in the backseat.

 

 

 

 

  
[Part Five](http://acerbus-instar.livejournal.com/362158.html#cutid1) | PART SIX | [Epilogue](http://acerbus-instar.livejournal.com/362737.html#cutid1)  



	8. Swift Hounds of Lússa: Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parting words.

EPILOGUE

 

 

 

 

It’s ten at night on the 16th before the Winchesters see him through the haze of Kittery Point’s only bar, which is about as risqué as the Mickey Mouse Club. Dean is surly over the lack of hustling pickings, so he’s taken to the dart board in the corner with a vengeance. Sam is nursing a glass of water like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered to this particular reality.

“You’re alive,” is all Sam says when the scruffy little midget wanders up to their table, squinting even under the subdued lighting of the place. “You took off pretty quick.”

“Hospitals are loud,” Andy says succinctly. “What are you drinking?”

“Water.” Sam scrubs at his forehead. “Not really looking for a hangover.”

The guy smiles lopsidedly and requests a Rolling Rock from the waitress that materializes at his elbow as if on cue. She bustles off with a cheerful smile. Weird, that; she’d been staring at the Winchesters like they were stray dogs in need of a good kick since they’d walked in the door. Took her a good fifteen minutes to bring their drinks, ten of which were spent talking to the barkeep. It takes her three to bring Andy his.

Companionable silence, for a bit, or as companionable as it can be. Andy watches the crowd – a little avidly, after Dean gives him a threatening look from the corner - and Sam watches him.

The guy across from him isn’t Andy Gallagher, Guthrie, OK, 53rd in his class – the one who’d grinned at a funeral, the one who’d let the world conform to him. Who’d been more uncomfortable with a dress shirt than the suggestion that he could’ve possibly murdered his father.

This Andy doesn’t fit in his own body anymore. Sits too stiff, and moves in little flickers of motion – fingers working restlessly at the wet label of the lager, eyes flickering across everyone in the bar and then back again. Never still, never calm. Wrapped up so tight nothing’ll ever bring him down.

“You should go someplace quiet,” Sam says abruptly. The look Andy gives him has him promptly adding, “Not witness protection or anything, just someplace quiet. To think. It helps, believe me.”

Dean’s looking at Sam out of the corner of his eye. Andy notices. Sam makes a point not to.

He peels the label free, sticks it to the countertop. “Ansem talked about dreams - a yellow-eyed man. Guess you knew about that too.”

Sam’s eyebrows rise. “You dream about him?”

“Yeah.” He spits the word out, quick enough for it to be just as quickly disregarded. “Who is he?”

“He’s the guy you need to be prepared for. He’s got something planned, for all of us. We’re trying to stop it before anything happens, but if it does, you’ve got to be ready.”

Andy barks a laugh. “Ready how? Play vigilante wannabes like you?”

“Just know where you stand,” Sam replies. “You made a choice last night. Don’t forget why.”

“I didn’t make a choice.” He drowns any further explanation in a swig of beer.

“You killed someone - but you’re still a good guy. You had no other choice.”

“It wasn’t a choice,” Andy repeats. He drains the beer and gets to his feet. “I’m not—this isn’t me, y’know? So, let me know if you figure it out. But other than that, please don’t call me. Ever.”

He leaves without waiting for a goodbye. Which is fair; Sam wasn’t thinking about giving one.

Dean sits down around the same time the front door slaps shut. “So what crawled up your ass and died?” Sam asks casually.

“What? I wasn’t mad at him. You assumed. Bad habit, Sammy. Nah, I just wanted to let you two have your alone time…”

There’s a good three seconds of obvious thinking, then an abrupt scowl. “Screw you.”

“I heard your little chats the last couple of days. You two are _adorable_ , playing all hard to get.”

The bitch face in full, and then Sam puts all his attention to finishing his water. Dean still hasn’t thrown in a commentary so he adds, “We’re down to twelve. No universal pattern. We’ve got less than we did before.”

Dean falls back in his chair, elbows splayed on the back. “You gonna tell me what happened in Nevada?”

There’s a long, dramatic moment – that weepy doe-eyed look he gets before a confession – but once he opens his mouth he comes out with a succinct, “No.”

“You’re such an asshole.”

The psychic grins good-naturedly. “Yeah? Go to hell.”

 

 

 

In the parking lot, Andy hops on the trunk of a Lincoln and lays down with his head against the back window, mindful of keeping his stitched arm curled across his stomach just so. In his mind it’s the roof of the van, and there’re no sodium vapor lamps overhead to drown out the stars.

He thinks he won’t take the next car; he’ll just say, _take me where you’re going._

He thinks he’ll just keep going until he finally ends up somewhere that he can see the stars proper.

Maybe he can see the Big Dipper, if he turns his head just right. Is that even around in the summer time? Why the hell are these called the Dog Days, anyway? Sirius isn’t even up.

Time goes like that for awhile, slow and lazy drips of it until he finally lapses into sleep.

 

 

 

 


End file.
